This book takes readers through a forgotten era of what is now the largest war zone in the Middle East. Because American friends find in his boyhood stories an Iraq they hadn't imagined, Balian feels there's a place for a book that gives insight into how Iraqis lived and behaved under normal conditions, in a pro-Western Iraq before Saddam Hussein. The reader pieces together the Iraqi culture through charming family accounts structured around a series of different points of interest. Chapters are named after different categories in Balian's memory bank: "Baghdad," "The River," "Iraqis," "Americans," "Women," and so on. Of the Iraqis, he tells stories of Kurds, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Armenians. Of foreigners, he writes about Americans, Europeans, and other Arabs who visited Iraq and left their impression and influence on Iraqi society. "Once Upon a Time in Iraq" helps every reader know another culture, one we are seriously involved with, better than before.