A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A hugely ambitious delightfully readable genuinely
informative portrait (The New York Times) of the two-centuries-long entwined histories of Iran
and America two powers who were once allies and now adversaries by an admired historian and
former journalist. In this rich fascinating history John Ghazvinian traces the complex story
of the relations between these two nations back to the Persian Empire of the eighteenth century
the subject of great admiration by Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams and an America seen
by Iranians as an ideal to emulate for their own government. Drawing on years of archival
research both in the United States and Iran including access to Iranian government archives
rarely available to Western scholars the Iranian-born Oxford-educated historian leads us
through the four seasons of U.S. Iran relations: the spring of mutual fascination the summer
of early interactions the autumn of close strategic ties and the long dark winter of mutual
hatred. Ghazvinian makes clear where how and when it all went wrong. America and Iran shows
why two countries that once had such heartfelt admiration for each other became such committed
enemies and why it didn t have to turn out this way.
