Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader

No other President of Iran has had comparable air time on international media outlets than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was reported that the ticket to his speech at Columbia University in September 2007 sold out almost as fast as those granting access to the concert of Bruce Springsteen, one of the idols of the popular music culture in the United States. Cab drivers from Malaysia to Venezuela praise him as an “anti-imperial hero” of the “oppressed” classes and US neoconservatives in the United States and their right-wing counterparts in Israel vilify him as an irrational anti-Semite. So when I first heard that Kasra Naji was writing a biography of the Islamic Republic’s ninth President, I was elated. Iran is currently undergoing a major transformation process in its domestic politics and international relations. Ahmadinejad is both a product of these changes and an agent of them. A biography of him is necessary and timely, so I turned to Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader with great interest.