Book of the Month: The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, by Hooman Majd

One of the things I love most about travel is the way it builds human bridges across the divides of stereotype and assumption. This is why when tensions were building between the U.S. and the Middle East a few years ago, I insisted on visiting Jordan, much to the consternation of friends and colleagues, so that I could hear firsthand the "talk on the Arab Street." That visit reaffirmed powerfully for me the truth that travelers are both ambassadors and walking media: We bring news and understanding of our world to people who have no personal knowledge of us, and we take back to our neighbors news and understanding of the unfamiliar world we've visited. And in so doing we build—we become—bridges of understanding.

Great books can be bridges too, and a prime proof of this is Iranian author Hooman Majd's wonderfully informed and enlightening new book, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran. Majd was born in Tehran but now lives in New York. His father was a diplomat—and grandfather an ayatollah—which gives him just the right mix of knowledge and perspective to help Westerners understand the complicated surface and soul of the new Iran.

He writes elegantly about the art of ta'arouf, the polite dance of self-deprecation—a kind of one-downmanship—that dominates social interactions. He expertly dissects Iran's superiority/inferiority complex, born of centuries of manipulation by the West and a stunted nationalism.

He also offers penetrating insights into the importance and interpretation of rights in Iran, and lucidly exposes the disagreements that demarcate Iranian hard-liners and progressives, and the subtle differences in social and religious thought that define different points along that spectrum.

Finally, utilizing his personal and professional connections to the full, Majd does a masterful job introducing and engaging a variety of modern Iranians, in settings that range from an opium-smoking gathering in rural Qom to the office of former President Khatami in Tehran to a New York TV interview with President Ahmadinejad that the author attended.

The Ayatollah Begs to Differ is a refreshing and mind-opening book, a nuanced and informed portrait of one of our most misunderstood global neighbors. It casts an arc of understanding from the Middle East to the Midwest—and, let us hope, from Tehran to Washington, D.C.