Abbas Milani is a historian and author. He is the Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of "The Shah". Milani has written for publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes and has appeared on CNN, the BBC, and NPR, among others. A member of the board of directors of the Iranian Studies Group at MIT, the San Francisco Chronicle has said that Milani has the ear of Washington insiders. He lives in California.