I hope my colleagues find this work worthy, for it is the product of many years' research, and a great many people provided information and insights. My interest in Yemen began with my first visit to Sana'a, Hodeida, Taiz, and Aden in 1972, as part of a larger tour of the region made possible by my undergraduate year at the American University in Cairo in 1971–72; it has continued ever since.

Research on which this book was based has been supported, directly or indirectly, from a range of sources. I returned to Sana'a in January 1977, with a grant for PhD dissertation research from the State University of New York at Binghamton. During the next four years of continuous residence in North Yemen, I worked as a “freelance” social scientist, conducting baseline surveys for several international development agencies and contractors, including the US Agency for International Development and the World Bank. These included an urban planning survey of workplaces in the five cities of the YAR; a short study of women's economic activities in three rural locations; “rural economic recognizance” in Hajja and Hodeida governorates; a comparative study of agricultural production in Ibb and ‘Amrān, conducted in conjunction with the American Institute for Yemeni Studies; and a nationwide survey conducted in twenty-two communities for the national rural electrification project. Between expeditions for these studies, I worked from my home in Sana'a with what was then called the Confederation of Yemeni Development Associations, preparing a dissertation on the “cooperative movement.”