Over the next few weeks, we're going to be featuring one interview per day with the authors of the books nominated for this year's Lionel Gelber Prize, a literary award for the year's best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs. The award is sponsored by the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto in cooperation with Foreign Policy. The interviews are conducted by Rob Steiner, former Wall Street Journal correspondent and director of fellowships in international journalism at the Munk School. 

Today's author is David Crist. Here's the jury's citation for The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran:

"The extent of ‘war' between Iran and the United States for more than 30 years is captured with authority and intensity by David Crist.  This is a story of chronic intrigue and occasional hope amounting to little more than deepening animosity and higher stakes. From the Iran-Contra scandal to Stuxnet, the ‘Twilight War' between the United States and Iran speaks to the tenacity of history and ideology in the face of human agency - a whodunit with the answer known before the story begins."  

Listen to the interview here.