Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804-1946 (1999), which has been translated to Persian and Turkish. Excerpts from this work informed an art exhibition in Baku, Azerbaijan (Yarat Centre, 2019). Kashani-Sabet subsequently published Conceiving Citizens: Women and the Politics of Motherhood in Iran (2011), which won the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies Book Award. Kashani-Sabet is also the author of a novel, Martyrdom Street (2010), and a co-edited volume, Gender in Judaism and Islam: Common Lives, Uncommon Heritage (2014).

Preface; A note on transliteration; Introduction; Part I. Uncertain Overtures (1796-1914): 1. Pluralist Persia: a land of many religions; 2. The portals of Persepolis: Persian antiquity and American curiosity; 3. A martyr and many masters: America and Iranian constitutionalism; Part II. Desultory Mordernities (1914-1941): 4. Iran in transition: war, famine, and recovery, 1914-1925; 5. Flirting with secular modernity: America and social change in Iran, 1925-1939; 6. Investing in Iran: frontiers and foreign competition, 1925-1939; Part III. Cataclysms (1941-1963): 7. Unwelcome visitors: the occupation of Iran during World War II; 8. Subverting sovereignty: the politics of oil; 9. Roots of revenge: cultural flux and specters of violence; Part IV. A Troubled Middle East (1960-1979): 10. The anti-Aryan moment: decolonization, race, and human rights; 11. A political minefield: Iran between Israel and pan-Arabism; 12. The Shah's fight for hegemony: from the Persian Gulf to the Vietnam war; Part V. The Schism (1978-1988): 13. The picketers come of age: from civil disobedience to armed protest; 14. Burning bridges: revolution and the rift in US-Iranian relations; 15. Neither heroes nor hostages.