The Great Satan vs. the Mad Mullahs How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other

Subjects:

• Multicultural Studies » Middle East Studies
• Political Science » International Relations
• Anthropology » Cultural Anthropology

Reviews:

• Regardless of the reader's viewpoint, this book is a challenging analysis by an anthropologist of an international conflict that threatens to get out of control. For that reason alone, this is a timely book.
  —MultiCultural Review Fall 2006
• [B]eeman is a good writer, who eschews the scholarly jargon that frequently makes academic books and articles unintelligble to all but specialists in a specific field. He is writing for the non-specialist, and he is more interested in informing the reader than in impressing his peers. The other strength of the book lies in the author's knowledge of Iranian history and culture. Beeman's discussion of economic development under the Pahlavi monarchy and how Americans in the country lived at the time is imformative, and his observation that Iranians hate being told what to do by people with whom they have no relationship should be taken under advisement by everybody....The Great Satan vs. the Mad Mullahs raises many questions and is problematic, those are additional reasons for reading it. It challenges the reader and forces him to question stereotypes about Iran and Washington's perspective on the country. It also encourages the reader to consider Tehran's perceptions.
  —Middle East Journal Spring 2006

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Discourse and Demonization
  American Myths
  Middle Eastern Myths
  Discourse and Rhetoric
  Images of the Great Satan
  Images of the Mad Mullah
  The Framework of U.S. Iranian Relations
  The Sins of the United States
  The Sins of Iran
  The Birth of Post-modern Conflict: How Iranian Media Came of Age
  Living with Iran: Resistance as Post-modern Discourse