This bestselling history of the Arab-speaking parts of the Islamic world by British-Lebanese historian Albert Hourani first appeared in 1991. A lot has happened since. In a new preface, journalist and Islamic scholar Malise Ruthven offers a potted biography of Hourani, while his afterword is a skilful summation of events in the past two decades (including a section on the Islamist challenge in Algeria). While Hourani did not predict the Arab spring, says Ruthven, he understood the precariousness of the region's regimes. The absence of civil society suggests that Arab democracy is some way off, Ruthven concludes, perhaps its greatest obstacle being a concept that Hourani calls 'asabiyya  a power-hungry "clannism" made more ruthless by modern systems of surveillance and torture. Hourani has been criticised for downplaying the violence, racism and misogyny of some Arab-Islamic societies, but Ruthven's contribution helps to restore the balance, making this a splendid general history of the Arab world from the life of Muhammad to the Facebook-using young activists who gathered in Tahrir Square calling for change.