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ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN, Tortured Confessions: Prison and Public Recantations in Modern Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). Pp. 279.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 has unleashed a flood of books on the causes and consequences of the rise of political Islam and the failure of Western-supported modernizing states. Ervand Abrahamian's new book is important because it is the first detailed academic work that deals with the conditions of the prisons and the horrors of the criminal system—the torture, the forced confessions, and the executions—in the newly established theocratic state. This book is a testimony to the horrors of self-righteous ideological regimes whose ruling elite claims a monopoly on truth and the knowledge of what is best for its citizens. This is a chilling book that should be read by all scholars and non-scholars who care about human rights.