Yann Richard, emeritus professor, Sorbonne nouvelle (Paris), began as a student of Persian Islamic philosophy and happened to be in Tehran before, during and after the 1979 Revolution. Since then he tried to understand why such a major crisis happened and made extensive research in the fields of sociology of Islam and modern Iranian history. In English his publications include a chapter in Nikki Keddie’s Modern Iran, Roots and Results of the Revolution (Yale University Press, 2003, initially published as Roots of Revolution, 1981); Shiite Islam: Polity, Ideology and Creed (Oxford—Cambridge Mass., Basil Blackwell, 1995); and edition of C.J. Edmonds, East and West of Zagros (Leiden—Boston, Brill, 2010).