Agriculture, poverty and reform in Iran by Mohammad Javad Amid.(London and New York, Routledge, 1990, pp. 177,£ 30 h/b.)

While the book presents a useful reader on Iran’s experience of land reform, its contributioncould have been fruitfully widened if the implications of this experience were explored, even ifbriefly, for other developing countries at a similar, or different, stage of development. After all,what gives this experience a remote semblance of ‘success’ is its achievement in abolishing thearchaic system of peasant-landlord relations and undermining the all-powerful political andeconomic power of landlords in rural Iran. It is also this aspect - and not the pedanticconsiderations of exactly how many peasants benefited from redistributions - that makes ittoday an enviable prescription for countries (such as Pakistan and Brazil), that still face thedaunting challenge of tackling their landlord-dominated rural structures.