John Ghazvinian joins us to talk about his new book, America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present, a comprehensive new survey of the bilateral relationship, based on years of archival research in both Iran and the United States, which he has been working on since 2008. For the past many decades, the relationship between the United States and Iran has been very hostile and toxic, defined by coups, hostage crises, inflammatory slogans, devastating sanctions. But it hasn’t always been this way, and the two countries actually had quite a lot of mutual admiration in the past. The book chronicles that, all the way back to 1720. Iran is often on the front page of the news in the US these days, but you will probably be surprised to find out that it was often on the front page of the US news in the 18th century as well!John was born in Iran but moved to London at the age of 1 and to Los Angeles in high school- I wanted to talk to him about his relationship to Iran and the language growing up, and what led him to write the book, much of which relied on primary source material in the Persian language located in Iran.