An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville
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- 9,99 €
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- 9,99 €
Publisher Description
One of NPR's Books We Love in 2022.
In this erudite and piercing biography, best-selling author Reza Aslan proves that one person’s actions can have revolutionary consequences that reverberate the world over.
Little known in America but venerated as a martyr in Iran, Howard Baskerville was a twenty-two-year-old Christian missionary from South Dakota who traveled to Persia (modern-day Iran) in 1907 for a two-year stint teaching English and preaching the gospel. He arrived in the midst of a democratic revolution—the first of its kind in the Middle East—led by a group of brilliant young firebrands committed to transforming their country into a fully self-determining, constitutional monarchy, one with free elections and an independent parliament.
The Persian students Baskerville educated in English in turn educated him about their struggle for democracy, ultimately inspiring him to leave his teaching post and join them in their fight against a tyrannical shah and his British and Russian backers. “The only difference between me and these people is the place of my birth," Baskerville declared, “and that is not a big difference.”
In 1909, Baskerville was killed in battle alongside his students, but his martyrdom spurred on the revolutionaries who succeeded in removing the shah from power, signing a new constitution, and rebuilding parliament in Tehran. To this day, Baskerville’s tomb in the city of Tabriz remains a place of pilgrimage. Every year, thousands of Iranians visit his grave to honor the American who gave his life for Iran.
In this rip-roaring tale of his life and death, Aslan gives us a powerful parable about the universal ideals of democracy—and to what degree Americans are willing to support those ideals in a foreign land. Woven throughout is an essential history of the nation we now know as Iran—frequently demonized and misunderstood in the West. Indeed, Baskerville’s life and death represent a “road not taken” in Iran. Baskerville’s story, like his life, is at the center of a whirlwind in which Americans must ask themselves: How seriously do we take our ideals of constitutional democracy and whose freedom do we support?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Aslan (God: A Human History) delivers an intriguing account of the life and death of Howard Baskerville, an early 20th-century Presbyterian missionary to Persia who joined the country's revolt against its autocratic shah. Largely unknown in the U.S., Baskerville was the son and grandson of Presbyterian preachers and embraced a vision of global democracy under the tutelage of Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University. Arriving in Tabriz in 1907, Baskerville taught English at the American Memorial School, where many of his students were involved in the fight against the shah's attempts to invalidate the country's fledgling constitution. Over his superiors' objections—both the Presbyterian church and the U.S. government insisted on neutrality—Baskerville took up arms and died fighting with the revolutionaries in March 1909. Aslan, a fierce advocate for democracy in present-day Iran, forcefully rejects the idea that Baskerville was a naïve "white savior." "Democracy," he writes, "was either inalienable or it wasn't.... The U.S. government may have believed the latter. But not Howard Baskerville." Replete with fascinating asides into the revolutionary politics of the era and the complex dynamics between Russia, England, and Persia, this is a provocative portrait of an unsung American hero.
