Vast political and economic shifts have transformed the Middle East since the 1985 edition of this award-winning work: the end of the Cold War, the Iran-Iraq war, and the Lebanese civil war; the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War; and the historic 1993 peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, to name just a few.

Which is why Robert A. and Elizabeth Warnock Fernea felt a need to return to the towns and cities they had written about - in Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and on the West Bank - to see just how these changes had affected the people who live there. Taking the reader beyond the corridors of power to the most candid of kitchen-table confidences, the authors succeed brilliantly in revealing the human face of the Arab world.