Thirty Portraits volume 2 (in Persian)

The second volume of Thirty Portraits includes Dr. Milani's reflections on Farzaneh Milani, Shahrnush Parsipur, Simin Behbahani, Qodsi Khanum, Bita Daryabari, Parviz Shokat, Hussein Montazeri, Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Bahram Beyzaie, and Fakhr al-Din Shadman among others.

"As the title suggests, 30 Portraits is a collection of my experiences and memories with thirty of my friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. I made the selection of these individuals not only based on the roles they have played in my life, but their invaluable part in the developments of the past half century. They say every person is an embodiment of memories. The catalyst for historical events has on one hand been a result of political and economic structures and the will of leaders, and on the other hand, the consequence of active resistance or silent complacency of people. 30 Portraits are my account of thirty of such people. In the past twenty years, I have written four books about some of the most important individuals in this group. I started with The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution, and then followed by writing two books about other prominent figures of contemporary Iran during the reign of the Shah. My subsequent book was an analysis of the Shah himself. 30 Portraits is complementary to these preceding four books. I wrote about each of the thirty individuals as an independent account. However, when I placed them together, they appeared to represent a continuous chronology of what has occurred in our collective history. One should not search for the reasons behind the developments of the past forty years in Iran in the hands of the Devil or at Mount Qaf in similar fashion to Attar's mythological Simourgh. Rather, to understand our modern history, we must seek nowhere else but in ourselves, as it is from us that is upon us."