Iran at War, by Kaveh Farrokh published in 2011 is a history of Iran's military conflicts from the rise of the Safavids around the 15th century to the end of the first Gulf War between Iran & Iraq in 1988.
This was a difficult book to read. There is a lot of repetition and there is too much detail. The repetition of descriptions (like curved shamshir swords especially) was tedious, while the excessive detail (like military dispositions during battles) was boring. However, since the book is about Iran's wars, the detail can be excused, and some of it, like the usage and the development of gunpowder, while useful, would have been more enjoyable if it had been better described. The book shows that Iran's location has always been, to put it mildly, rough. One of the 3 gunpowder empires, the Safavids were threatened by the Ottoman Empire from the West, the Uzbeks from the North-East, the Aghans from the East and to a lesser extent, the Mughals from the South-East and the Arabs to the South. Their successors, the Qajars, had to contend with the Ottomans, the Russians and the British Raj. While today Iran is wary of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, I doubt that danger is as serious as that posed by the Ottomans or other western enemies because before the Ottomans, the Sassanids faced off against Byzantium while Parthian Empire faced Rome. Reading the book gave me a better understanding of the geopolitics of countries. The ground determines one's enemies.
One reason I chose to read the book is because I used to think that given the importance of Iran historically, it does not appear to be a popular subject for discussion. For example, Francis Fukuyama in The Origins of Political Order did not mention it even once. Further, while one did not have to look hard for mentions of the contribution of Greece, Rome (especially), China and Egypt in places like Quora, interest in Persia appeared to be less. Since reading the book though, I have started noticing more mentions of it, so perhaps I was the one who was not looking.
Another reason why I chose to read it is because the author's name led me to believe he is Iranian, so he would be telling the history from a perspective different from the usual western one. However, after I finished the book, I googled the guy and it appears he is Greek. It is possible that he is of Iranian descent, if not he is quite partial to them. The book is rather jingoistic. It's accounts of the wars against the Ottomans for example, usually gave staggering figures for the Ottoman armies, often stating that an army of 500,000 was mobilized. Given that historical mobilization rates are usually about 2% of the population, that would give the Ottoman population at 25 million which agrees with scholarly estimates. While this makes mathematical sense, it doesn’t make military sense because the Ottomans were usually also fighting in Europe at the same time. Moving the entire army to the east and then back to the west would be a logistical nightmare and would have left the Ottomans defenseless against the west, especially Austria. Arrayed against this supposedly huge army would be less than 100,000 Safavid soldiers who would often win the war. This portrayal of Iranian martial prowess continues up to accounts of the Iran-Iraq war where Iran was portrayed (correctly) as fighting against an enemy that enjoyed massive foreign support from the most powerful countries in the world. And that is another thing, I have always wondered why Iran was unable to get much support during that war. Was the rhetoric of the Islamic Revolution that terrifying that no one wanted to be friends with them?
The book ended abruptly. This might be apt since Iran has not fought a war since 1988.
I did not enjoy the book and I do not recommend it. A Wikipedia article would be more enjoyable and just as informative.