Secularization of Iran: A Doomed Failure? is an extremely readable, insightful, and detailed contribution by Azadeh Kian-Thiebaut to the literature on Iranian society and politics in the 20th century. When I first started reading the book, I expected the pedantic descriptions that often characterize doctoral dissertations turned into books. Fortunately, however, I found the book much more than a dispassionate treatment of facts and theories. The author has perspectives and points of views that are not just hidden in the various descriptions of events and ideas. Yet her work is not an ideological treatment of Iranian politics and society, either. Events and historical facts are treated with a level of sociological objectivity and sound judgment that are not too common among Iran's observers.