Michael Ledeen's five best books about Iran

Michael Ledeen, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the recently-released The Iranian Time Bomb, selected a five best list of "masterly works" about Iran for Opinion Journal.

One title on the list:

Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat (Free Press, 2007).

Marina Nemat was arrested at age 16 in 1982 and held in Tehran's infamous Evin Prison for more than two years, accused of antiregime activity. She was not an activist but a friend of leftists and a Christian. In prison, she was interrogated and tortured, then sentenced to death. But a guard named Ali had fallen in love with her and saved her from execution. She remained in prison, though, and Ali became her husband -- as well as a new source of menace when he forced her to convert to Islam by threatening her family. In "Prisoner of Tehran," her gripping, elegantly written memoir, Ms. Nemat, who now lives in Canada, reminds us that it is through the details of daily life that the evils of a regime such as the Islamic Republic are best understood.

Read more about the other titles on Ledeen's list.

--Marshal Zeringue