Word: shahs
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Egypt, Morocco and Mexico provided temporary havens, but as the Pahlavis were forced to move on, they increasingly found themselves in a dog-eat-Shah world. Ten cramped weeks in the Bahamas cost them an extortionate $1.2 million. Panama's late Omar Torrijos extended his hospitality and then made passes at the Queen...
Shawcross ferrets out a wealth of political, diplomatic and intelligence detail, as well as a fragrant cache of jet-set gossip. In his prime, the Shah had a special yen for Lufthansa hostesses but also entertained a variety of lovelies flown in from Mme. Claude's in Paris. His other tastes were rich, but, oddly, Iran's leading personage did not eat caviar...
...October 1979, in desperate need of treatment, the Shah was allowed to enter the U.S. temporarily. By the time he checked into New York Hospital, he had an international collection of physicians. Shawcross's last chapters reverberate with the clash of medical opinions and large egos. When things sorted out, the Shah was back in Egypt, where his spleen was removed by the renowned Texas heart surgeon Michael DeBakey. The procedure also revealed fatal malignancies of the liver...
...July 27, 1980, Radio Tehran announced the death of "the bloodsucker of the century." The judgment was self-serving and exaggerated the Shah's stature. Shawcross's story of a pawn in King's clothing comes to a sorrier conclusion. The Shah's reign, this book suggests, was less a study in the banality of evil than the banality of pride...
Novelist Larry McMurtry converts facts into folklore, tapping themes that belong to our cultural gene pool. -- William Shawcross recounts the decline and fall of the Shah of Iran...