where the writers are Book Review of Abbas Milani's 'The Shah'
'The Shah,' by Abbas Milani: biography review  Susanne Pari,
Special to The Chronicle  Sunday, January 9, 2011  The ShahBy
Abbas Milani(Palgrave Macmillan; 496 pages; $30)  Nearly every
chapter in "The Shah," Abbas Milani's skillful biography
of Iran's last king, begins with a phrase from Shakespeare's
"King Richard II," about a tragic figure who believes he is
ordained by God to lead his people. He likens himself to the sun
and to the lion, is usually festooned in finery and jewels, and
is surrounded by sycophants rather than sages. Not an evil king
but an insecure one - weak, indecisive and out of touch.
Ultimately, by dint of his hubris, he is overthrown and dies.
The divine right of kings is, of course, not a solely European
notion. In ancient Iran, Zoroastrian priests ruled in
conjunction with divinely anointed shahs. But as Milani points
out, the "idea of a modernizing monarch is almost an oxymoron."
And yet this idea of melding the autocr