This is a successor volume to the author's Egypt during the Nasser Years. Like its predecessor, it is based heavily on interviews with participants in the tumultuous events of those years. Quotations from those interviews are sprinkled throughout the text, giving it a firsthand quality that is rare in academic works. Indeed, the author has succeeded brilliantly in his stated goal to write an “accessible” book, with “theorizing and the use of political science concepts (kept) to a minimum” (p. ix). Although passing mention is made of Gramsci's notion of hegemony, readers are referred to Beattie's volume on Nasser if they are interested in its elaboration. The text is organized chronologically, and although it may illustrate the absence of Gramscian hegemony—hence, the political failure of the Free Officers—the reader is left to decide that for himself or herself and whether and in what ways the absence of “hegemony” might be important. It is, in sum, a highly informed, well-written political history and biography of the Sadat era.