America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present

Written by:
John Ghazvinian
Narrated by:
Fred Sanders

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
2
Narrator
1
Release Date
January 2021
Duration
27 hours 11 minutes
Summary
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.
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Anonymous

Overall, this book gives a good history between the United States and Iran.  However, the author appears to be very biased.   The author is overly antagonistic to the Shah and extremely sympathetic to the Islamic regime and its actions post-1979.  For example, the author makes multiple negative inferences against the Shah for weighing his options as one who can’t make up his mind but gives the benefit of the doubt to the Islamic regime for the same conduct as being pragmatic.  The author does this in multiple contexts and it is a common theme throughout the book.   The author, moreover, overlooks the horrific atrocities that the Islamic regime has caused the Iranian people, including deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iranians during the Iran Iraq war that could have ended in 1982 but which the Mullas extended for political gain.  The author very quickly alludes to this but justifies it as revolutionary fervor.  Relatedly, the author focuses on political prisoners during the Shah as an atrocity but fails to do the same during the Islamic regime, which engages in the same practice at a much larger scale.   The author, furthermore, overlooks the dictatorial nature of the Islamic Republic by putting great weight on elected officials and presidents, but does not focus that those eligible to be elected have to first be selected by the authoritarian Mullahs thereby not giving the people a real choice.  Nor does the author make reference at all that the Islamic regime routinely holds anti-American rallies and that students at schools are told to chant death to America thereby indoctrinating anti-American feelings.  The same chants also occur at every Friday prayer led by the regime. Rather, the author tries to paint a picture that the Islamic regime has tried to have good relations with America, has often outsmarted the west and it is America that has fumbled the opportunities to build good relations with Iran.  As one last example, the author completely ignores the financial condition in Iran that gave the people a much higher living standard under the Shah than under the Islamic regime.  In this context, although the author discusses uprisings during the Shah in part for financial inequity, the author categorically fails to discuss the multiple uprisings during the Islamic regime and the brutal put down of those uprising by the regime. Indeed, the author downplays the uprisings and the force used by the regime to put them down.   As such, even though this book provides a good overall history, it is very biased and should be read with that in mind.

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