The first edition of this work by Bayat (sociology, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), with its emphasis on sociopolitical transformation brought about by the agency of internal social forces in the Muslim Middle East (inclusive of "the subaltern, the urban dispossessed, Muslim women, the globalizing youth, and other urban grass roots"), was published a year before the uprisings of the so-called "Arab spring" stunned and surprised those who had thought the region complacent and accepting of the various governing dictatorships. His argument that these groups have always been engaged in social "non-movements" or, in other words, dispersed and disparate struggles in the immediate domains of everyday life, quietly laying the groundwork for significant transformations of the Middle Eastern economic, social, cultural, and religious domains, has been called prescient and even prophetic in light of the later uprisings. This edition has been revised and extended with new chapters addressing the Arab uprisings and Iran's Green movement of 2009. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)