Montesquieu once asked a now famous question: “How can one be Persian?”

Porter tackles the question head-on and as he does, takes the reader through a fascinating kaleidoscope of ethnic and linguistic encounters, of artistic and cultural fusion, of a geographic area and its populations, and of the gradual weaving of a common civilization in an all-encompassing people-oriented history. The result is a unique history of singular resonance for anyone trying to understand the Islamic Republic of Iran today.