An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville

"I picked up An American Martyr in Persia not knowing or, frankly, caring much about early 20th-century Iran or the American missionaries who spread the Gospel there, but Reza Aslan does a remarkable job proving the importance of that time and place. Howard Baskerville was an evangelist of both American religious virtue and democracy when his own Jim Crow America was little more than an apartheid state. Still, the people of Persia – now Iran – believed in his ideals and risked their lives to win their own freedom. What then happened to them – and to Baskerville himself – was a tragedy that echoes down to the present day, as Iranians of a new generation attempt to claim for themselves some measure of the freedoms Americans take for granted."