Shah’s last ride. William Shawcross. 1988.

This is the story of a king's journey into exile and death. The story of the Shah of Iran, king of kings, stripped of honor, adrift in a dangerous world of divided loyalties, The Shah's Last Ride is journalism with the power of myth and the classical dimensions of tragedy. William Shaweross, acclaimed author of Sideshow and The Quality of Mercy, captures the Shah in flight from his enemies, powerless in the wake of his government's collapse, dying of cancer, and seeking refuge with his once-devoted allies.

Moving from the surreal world of the Shah's court under siege, Shawcross describes the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the drama of the hostage crisis, and each step of the Shah's odyssey through Egypt, Morocco, the Bahamas, Mexico, the United States, Panama (where he was the guest of General Omar Torrijos and then Colonel Manuel Noriega), and back to Sadat's Egypt to die. Interwoven throughout are scenes of the Shah's rule from his ascension to the Peacock Throne to the final disintegration of his sycophantic court. We see the Shah's alternating enlightenment, vanity, and despotism through the progress of the White Revolution, the lavish excesses of the oil-boom years, and the bloody reign of SAVAK, the Shah's secret police force.

Shawcross also describes the Shah's warm relationships —and enormous arms deals-with the West, showing how they helped the Shah destroy alternatives to his own rule and encour aged the delusions that led to his eventual downfall. Shawcross recounts the Carter administration's attempts to balance the concerns of a fallen ally, strategic realities, and the interests of the American hostages held in Iran. And he offers a striking account of the eight successive teams of doctors who, often at cross-purposes, treated the Shah.

A portrait of one of this century's most complex leaders and, more importantly, of the shifting alliances and tenuous loyalties that define international politics, The Shah's Last Ride is modern history at its most powerful.