Book cover of The Iranian Expanse: Transforming Royal Identity through Architecture, Landscape, and the Built Environment, 550 BCE-642 CE

Book description

The Iranian Expanse explores how kings in Persia and the ancient Iranian world utilized the built and natural environment to form and contest Iranian cultural memory, royal identity, and sacred cosmologies. Investigating over a thousand years of history, from the Achaemenid period to the arrival of Islam, The Iranian Expanse…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Iranian Expanse as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I have been to Iran twice for long journeys to historic sites. Like so many other travelers, I was captivated by the landscape of high mountains and parched plains and by the extraordinary buildings erected in the deep past.

Canepa’s book enabled me to travel again (in my mind) to the great palaces and sacred sites where each of the classical dynasties made its mark. Once again, I was struck by the absence of temples (before late antiquity) and by that hallmark of Iranian architecture, the ayvan, a great vaulted chamber open on one side from which a shah could…

From James' list on Iran, past and present.

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Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

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