Description

By (author) Ghazvinian, John

Short /annotation:

An epic history revealing how the US and Iran went from allies to adversaries over three hundred years

Selected as one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times

In recent times, the United States and Iran have seemed closer to war than peace, but that is not where their story began. When America was in its infancy, Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams turned to the history of the Persian Empire as they looked for guidance on how to run their new country. And in the following century, Iranian newspapers heralded America as an ideal that their own government might someday emulate. How, then, did the two nations become the adversaries that they are today?

In this rich, fascinating history, John Ghazvinian traces the complex story of America and Iran over three centuries. Drawing on years of research conducted in both countries – including access to Iranian government archives rarely available to Western scholars – he leads us through the four seasons of US-Iranian relations: from the spring of mutual fascination, where Iran, sick of duplicitous Britain and Russia interfering in its affairs, sought a relationship with the United States, to the long, dark winter of hatred that we are yet to see end. A revealing account, America and Iran lays bare when, where and how it all went wrong – and why it didn’t have to be this way.

Table of contents:

Introduction

Part I: Spring

1 East of Eden

2 Tashrifat

3 The Amateurs

4 The Professionals

5 The Man from Manila

6 War and Peace

Part II: Summer

7 “The Sordid Side”

8 The Warrior-King

9 Hello Johnny

10 Tehran Spring

11 “One Penny More”

12 The Liberty Bell and the Wool Pajamas

13 1953

Part III: Autumn

14 “Yes” and “Yes, Sir”

15 You Say You Want a Revolution?

16 This Turbulent Priest

17 The Final Emperor

18 The Unthinkable

Part IV: Winter

19 1979 309

20 Dulce et Decorum Est

21 Goodwill Hunting

22 The First Hopey-Changey Moment

23 That September Day

24 The Moral Cold War

25 Atoms for Peace?

26 Designed to Fail

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Archival sources

Notes

Index

Illustration credits

Review quote:

‘Delightfully readable, genuinely informative and impressively literate.’

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‘Ghazvinian recounts a tragic story of Iranian overtures spurned by Americans in cahoots with their Israeli and Saudi allies… Ghazvinian has a witty style.’

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‘This book presents the long, troubled relationship between the United States and Iran in a breezy and supple narrative, replete with poignant anecdotes, to posit convincingly that “antagonism between Iran and America is wholly unnecessary”.’

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‘a stimulating and well-written study of one of the key relationships in today’s world.’

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‘a magnificent, bold, wide-reaching and potentially significant book on the thorny subject of Iranian-American relations… throws fresh historical light on the original exchanges between Americans and Iranians, and shows us fascinating historical characters, brought vividly to life with pen portraits and amusing anecdotes… The framing of the book into four seasons, ending with winter, is a stroke of genius as it lends to [Ghazvinian’s] overall argument a poignant res