rcmnd

PersiansBook

by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

Who uses, recommends or left Persians, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

1 person

Ali Vaez
Ali Vaez is the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group.
recommended

So the first book I want to recommend is called The Persians The Age of the Great Kings by Lloyd Llewellyn Llewellyn Jones. And this is a really interesting book because most of the stories that have been written or histories that have been written about ancient Persia have been based on Greek sources. But but what what this author has done is that he's actually gone to the Persian sources.

Answering The Ezra Klein Show's closing question, three books to recommend, in “What Trump Didn’t Know About Iran” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ali-vaez.html). Quoted from the episode's YouTube auto-captions.

2026-03-14·youtube.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

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