In 2005, her listeners could simply walk out on the harangue. In 1979, John W. Limbert Jr. was not so lucky; he was, literally, Ebtekar's captive audience. Limbert, an erudite diplomat and scholar of Persian poetry, was one of the 52 American hostages who suffered through 444 days of captivity in revolutionary Iran, and he remembers Ebtekar with contempt. Back then, she was known as "Screaming Mary," the young spokesperson for the student hostage-takers -- a smug radical who regularly berated the Americans with finger-waving, ill-informed lectures about the evils of their country.

At one point in Mark Bowden's riveting new book, Guests of the Ayatollah, Ebtekar browbeats a CIA agent named William J. Daugherty over "the inhuman, racist decision" to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After Daugherty shoots back that the Japanese started the war at Pearl Harbor, Ebtekar looks confused. "Pearl Harbor? Where's Pearl Harbor?" she asks. Hawaii, she is told. Her reply, after a moment of confused silence: "The Japanese bombed Hawaii?"

In many ways, Ebtekar is a fine symbol for Iran's amateurish young radicals. Brimming with righteous fire and a sophomoric, conspiratorial view of the world, they performed a dramatic act -- storming the U.S. embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979 -- that had grown-up ramifications for Iran, the United States and the world. The crisis (arguably) felled a U.S. president and (indisputably) strengthened the clerics' power in Iran's post-revolution power struggle, locking Iran and the United States into a spiral of conflict that whirls on today with the tensions over Iran's nuclear program.

The student radicals were convinced that the embassy was a "den of spies" aimed at restoring the shah -- the country's exiled former autocrat, whom President Carter had decided to let into the United States for cancer treatment -- to power. What they found instead, in Bowden's masterfully told tale, was a CIA mission in tatters, with not a single agent fluent in Farsi -- a bewildered team of operatives who barely understood the events engulfing them. "For years, little intelligence was collected from Iran that did not originate with the shah's own regime," Bowden writes. "Now, with Iran suddenly under new masters and the situation in constant, confusing flux, the agency was . . . pathetically far from being able to influence events, despite the overblown fears of most Iranians, who saw the CIA as omnipotent and omnipresent." In contrast, several of the diplomats on duty were first-rate Farsi speakers and Iran scholars, deeply empathetic to the country's culture and people.

But the student radicals knew little of the world and its ways, let alone the difference between a diplomat and a spy. They saw an operative with James Bond-like powers in every corner. One interrogator questioned State Department security officer Alan Golacinski about his digital watch, convinced that it was a secret radio.

Often, the encounters were not so comic. Some hostages were badly beaten. Others faced terrifying mock executions. A few were thrown in solitary confinement. Bowden skillfully gets inside the minds of the hostages, vividly describing their churning emotions and harrowing experiences.

Fans of the author of Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo will see plenty of classic Bowden here: meticulous reporting backed by a compelling narrative. But unlike those two books, in which he spent considerable time trying to understand Somali fighters and Colombian drug lords, Guests of the Ayatollah provides only glimpses of the thoughts of the foreign antagonists.

Still, Bowden skillfully evokes the era and the ordeal, putting a human face on the yellow ribbons. And he describes in detail President Carter's vacillations, the failed rescue attempts, and the charlatans and apologists who acted as private intermediaries to seek the hostages' release (and their own photo ops).

Mostly, however, the book is about the hostages themselves. These men and women deserve their day, and Bowden has given it to them. Their jailers hardly knew what to make of people such as Limbert or Michael Metrinko or Barry Rosen -- diplomats who embraced the Iranians' culture and spoke their language well. John Limbert, in particular, intrigued them. He knew more about Iran's history than most of his captors did and spent much of his time translating books from English to Farsi. Metrinko's carefully crafted Farsi insults shocked the hostage-takers, inviting several beatings -- though they must have invited some admiration, too.

The young, unformed minds of the student radicals were still locked in an earlier era when the CIA and British intelligence had real power in Iran and used it malevolently, above all in the 1953 CIA-supported coup that toppled the country's popular, nationalist prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. As a result, they scarcely understood the power of their own revolution -- of a new era of mass politics that was fed by the power of the media, a growing middle class's discontent with the shah's dictatorship, a disoriented urban proletariat in search of a savior and the determination of the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to win at all costs. The revolution simply couldn't be undone by the CIA this time.

"Screaming Mary" and her comrades also scarcely understood the U.S. position on the revolution. L. Bruce Laingen, the seasoned diplomat and chargé d'affaires at the embassy, wrote at the start of his personal diary of the hostage-taking: "Why? To what end? What purpose is served? We have tried by every available means over the past months to demonstrate, by word and deed, that we accept the Iranian revolution . . . . we wish it well and hope it can strengthen Iran's integrity and independence."

Long-time Iran-watchers often have such "Bruce Laingen moments" -- scratching their heads and wondering why the Islamic Republic behaves so rashly and seemingly without strategic direction. In foreign affairs, the country is isolated; poor diplomacy has left it with few allies that it can count on in a crunch -- including a showdown with Washington over Iran's nuclear ambitions. (Those countries seeking to avert war are motivated more by worries about oil and stability than by loyalty to Tehran.) Economically, the country is wretchedly managed; despite its abundant natural resources, oil reserves and talented workforce, Iran is punching far below its potential economic weight. And in politics, the country's populist new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has publicly embraced Holocaust denial -- a disgrace that, beyond its moral depravity, also raises the question: "Why? For what purpose?"

Perhaps the reason for such excesses is that the spirit of the hostage-takers still haunts Iran today. They acted without the prior knowledge of Ayatollah Khomeini, Bowden notes. The embassy seizure was not a well thought-out ploy vetted by senior officials; it was a rashly planned tactical move designed to win a short-term public relations victory, burnish the students' anti-imperialist credentials and drive a wedge between Tehran's moderates and radicals. The hostage-takers presented the new Khomeini regime with a fait accompli -- with fateful consequences.

Decades later, Iranian politics still contains something similar -- an element of surprise, along with confusion. Long after the Babel of the hostage crisis, many voices still speak in Tehran; the president says that Israel should be wiped off the map, and other political leaders scramble -- some belatedly endorsing his rant, some distancing themselves, all while the analysts scratch their heads, looking for explanations.

Indeed, that president is himself a former student radical. Some former hostages allege that Ahmadinejad was one of their interrogators. Some hostage-takers -- several of whom are reformist politicians today -- deny this, saying that he wanted to take over the Soviet embassy instead. "Without any doubt," Bowden writes, "Ahmadinejad was one of the central players in the group that seized the embassy and held hostages." Whatever the case may be, the president clearly still has much of the hard-line student radical left in him.

Meanwhile, last month, Massoumeh Ebtekar, "Screaming Mary," was awarded a prestigious prize by the United Nations for her work on environmental issues. The shadow of the student radicals has not yet receded, and this chapter in Iranian history has not yet played itself out.

Reviewed by Afshin Molavi
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Designed to help prevent disease, premature aging, optimize weight, increase energy, and love what you eat while doing so, Mercola’s easy to follow program will help you avoid and eliminate the underlying causes of health and weight issues.

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When we first meet Julie, she's a frustrated temp-to-perm secretary who slaves away at a thankless job, only to return to an equally demoralizing apartment in the outer boroughs of Manhattan each evening. At the urging of Eric, her devoted and slightly geeky husband, she decides to start a blog that will chronicle what she dubs the "Julie/Julia Project." What follows is a year of butter-drenched meals that will both necessitate the wearing of an unbearably uncomfortable girdle on the hottest night of the year, as well as the realization that life is what you make of it and joy is not as impossible a quest as it may seem, even when it's -10 degrees out and your pipes are frozen.

Powell is a natural when it comes to connecting with her readers, which is probably why her blog generated so much buzz, both from readers and media alike. And while her self-deprecating sense of humor can sometimes dissolve into whininess, she never really loses her edge, or her sense of purpose. Even on day 365, she's working her way through Mayonnaise Collee and ending the evening "back exactly where we started--just Eric and me, three cats and Buffysitting on a couch in the outer boroughs, eating, with Julia chortling alongside us."

Inspired and encouraging, Julie and Julia is a unique opportunity to join one woman's attempt to change her life, and have a laugh, or ten, along the way. --Gisele Toueg

From Publishers Weekly
Powell became an Internet celebrity with her 2004 blog chronicling her yearlong odyssey of cooking every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the art of French Cooking. A frustrated secretary in New York City, Powell embarked on "the Julie/Julia project" to find a sense of direction, and both the cooking and the writing quickly became all-consuming. Some passages in the book are taken verbatim from the blog, but Powell expands on her experience and gives generous background about her personal life: her doting husband, wacky friends, evil co-workers. She also includes some comments from her "bleaders" (blog readers), who formed an enthusiastic support base. Powell never met Julia Child (who died last year), but the venerable chef's spirit is present throughout, and Powell imaginatively reconstructs episodes from Child's life in the 1940s. Her writing is feisty and unrestrained, especially as she details killing lobsters, tackling marrowbones and cooking late into the night. Occasionally the diarist instinct overwhelms the generally tight structure and Powell goes on unrelated tangents, but her voice is endearing enough that readers will quickly forgive such lapses. Both home cooks and devotees of Bridget Jones–style dishing will be caught up in Powell's funny, sharp-tongued but generous writing.
Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This cookbook provides 150 recipes exactly as they are used at Keller's restaurant. It is also his culinary manifesto, in which he shares the unique creative processes that led him to invent Peas and Carrots--a succulent pillow of a lobster paired with pea shoots and creamy ginger-carrot sauce--and other high-wire culinary acts. It offers unimagined experiences, from extracting chlorophyll to use in coloring sauces to a recipe for chocolate cake accompanied by red beet ice cream and a walnut sauce. You are urged to follow Keller's recipes precisely and also to view them as blueprints. To keep them alive, they must be infused with your own commitment to perfection and pleasure, as you define those terms.

Keller's story, shared through the writing of Michael Ruhlman, shows how this chef was both born and made. After winning rave Reviews when he was still in his 20s, it took a more experienced chef throwing a knife at him because he did not know how to truss a chicken to open his eyes to the importance of the discipline and techniques of classical French cooking. To acquire these fundamental skills, he apprenticed at eight of the finest restaurants in France.

Grounded in classic technique, Keller's cooking is characterized by traditional marriages of ingredients, assembled in breathtakingly daring new ways, such as Pearls and Oyster, glistening caviar and oysters served on a bed of creamy pearl tapioca. Continually piquing the palate, his meals are a procession of 5 to 10 dishes, all small portions vibrantly composed. For example, Pan Roasted Breast of Squab with Swiss Chard, Seared Foie Gras, and Oven-Dried Black Figs require just three birds to serve six. The result: you are never sated, always stimulated.

The 200 photographs by Deborah Jones include more than just beauty shots: they show how to prepare various dishes; how Keller, shown stroking a whole salmon, respects his ingredients; and how the perfection of baby fava beans still nestled in the downy lining of their succulent pod, or the seduction of an abundance of fresh caviar, calls out the best from the chef. --Dana Jacobi

From Publishers Weekly
"Cooking is not about convenience, and it's not about shortcuts. Take your time. Move slowly and deliberately, and with great attention," writes Keller, the owner of the French Laundry in Napa Valley who was named 1997's best chef in America by the James Beard Foundation. At a decidedly unhurried pace, Keller delivers 150 recipes that reflect the perfectionism that catapulted him to national acclaim. With few exceptions (e.g., Gazpacho, Eric's Staff Lasagne), recipes are haute, labor-intensive preparations: Lobster Consomm? en Gel?e, Warm Fruitwood-Smoked Salmon with Potato Gnocchi and Balsamic Glaze, or Braised Stuffed Pig's Head. Tongue-in-cheek recipe names like "Macaroni and Cheese" (aka Butter-Poached Maine Lobster with Creamy Lobster Broth and Mascarpone-Enriched Orzo) and "Banana Split" (actually, Poached Banana Ice Cream with White Chocolate-Banana Crepes and Chocolate Sauce) belie the complexity of the dishes. Throughout, Keller conveys his vision as a culinary artist in spare, meticulous prose, emphasizing form over expedience: "the great challenge [of cooking] is to derive deep satisfaction from the mundane." (Nov..
- is to derive deep satisfaction from the mundane." (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed business Information, Inc.