Kaveh Farrokh

Kaveh Farrokh (Persian: کاوه فرخ‎) (born September 24, 1962) is a Greek author specializing in Iranian history, and has been a frequent lecturer on Iran-related topics at the University of British Columbia as part of the UBC Continuing Education program. He also works as a college counselor.

Farrokh was born in Athens, Greece. He states that he attended the Institute Chateaubriand in Cannes, France, then went on to obtain his undergraduate arts degree (BA) in May 1985 and his Ph.D. in September 2001 from the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at the University of British Columbia, where he specialized in the cognitive and linguistic processes of Persian speakers. Farrokh has written three books and a number of articles for journals and online publications. He works as a counselor at Langara College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He has also lectured at the University of British Columbia's Persian Legacy series.

In 2009 he was given a Merit Award by the Iran Heritage, Persian Gulf, and Iran Alliance.

Farrokh has published three books dealing with the military history of Persia and Iran.

In the foreword to Shadows in the Desert, Richard N. Frye praises the author for giving "the Persian side of the picture as opposed to the Greek and Roman viewpoint which has long dominated our understanding of these wars", describing his approach as "refreshing". The book was criticized by Jona Lendering in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, who has written that it contained factual errors and ignored recent scholarship. Lendering's review was disputed in a later issue of Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Citing Lendering, Pierre Briant and Amélie Kuhrt agree that recent advances in Achaemenid historiography are not always correctly evaluated and taken fully into account. They also criticize excessively aggressive responses by others to Lendering's review stating that such polemical exchange gives a distorted, even caricatured image of the state of Achaemenid history today.

Farrokh has been interviewed on Voice of America's Persian service about the legacy of the Achaemenid founder, Cyrus the Great. The History Channel has also interviewed him on the topic of technology in ancient Persia for the series Engineering an Empire which aired in 2006.

His third book, Iran at War, is the continuation of Persian military history, following the period covered in Shadows in the Desert.