Isa Blumi, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University’s History Department and Middle East Institute, is author of numerous articles on the modern Middle East’s history that focus especially on late imperial rivalries in the Arabian Gulf and Yemen as well as issues of Muslim identity in the context of modernity. A former Fulbright-Hayes, Woodrow Wilson, SSRC, ACLS, and AIYS fellow, among his publications is the book, Rethinking the Late Ottoman Empire (2003) and articles appearing in International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

• Introduction 1. Yemen’s Social Pathologies beyond the Strategic Mainstream 2. The Local Scramble for Ascendancy and the Rise of Modern Polities 3. The Contingent State: The Dynamics of Administrating Yemen 4. The Frontier as a Measure of Modern State Power 5. Unification and the Roots of Salih’s Authoritarian Push. Conclusion

"Blumi's Chaos in Yemen brings a fresh perspective to our thinking about the current crises in Yemen and for this alone Chaos is definitely worth a read... Blumi's Chaos in Yemen is an interesting read of contemporary Yemeni history and society, but it is also an important contribution to the ways that we think about Yemen." - Charles Schmitz; Yemen Update, Number 52: 2010"Isa Blumi’s inquiry into the historical and contemporary dynamics of state–society relations in Yemen could hardly be more timely given scholarly and policy interest in the antecedents of Yemen’s current revolutionary movement...readers certainly stand to benefit from Blumi’s careful historical analysis of the dialect relationships between local, state, and imperial power in the late Ottoman period and from his efforts to put this analysis to use in untangling the dynamics of Salih’s regime today." - Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Department of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, N.Y.; International Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (2011)"[I]t is a scholarly work written by someone who has a full command of the sources, including the Ottoman archives. Many of his footnotes give fascinating additions to what is in the text, and the bibliography will be greatly appreciated by his fellow scholars." - Noel Brehony; The British-Yemeni Society