In 2010, a schoolteacher from Minneapolis accepted an invitation from an Iranian friend to travel to the Islamic Republic of Iran, a place labeled “evil” by the US government. “Iran is a snake with many heads,” his friend had told him on the night they met for the first time. “The mask is there, but no one knows what is going on.” From a coffee shop in Minneapolis to tea houses lined with Persian rugs, follow one American’s personal quest to understand a world hidden by negative headlines ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.