In Tribes and Politics in Yemen, Marieke Brandt maps out the rise of the Huthi movement and Huthi expansionism in Yemen, from the birth of the Zaydi “Believing Youth” movement in the early 1990s; to the Saʿdah conflicts pitting Huthi rebels and their supporters against the Yemeni government and other armed groups; to the 2011 Arab uprisings resulting in the ouster of former Yemeni president Ali ʿAbd Allah Salih; to the Huthi's seizure of the Yemeni capital of Sanaʿaʾ in 2014, resulting in the expulsion of Yemen's interim government led by President ʿAbdrabbuh Mansur Hadi and intervention by the Saudi-led coalition in 2015. Making use of extensive fieldwork and interviews, Brandt reconstructs the local developments of the Huthi movement and the evolution of the Saʿdah conflict, both physically and ideologically, conveying oft-ignored narratives through a detailed, and balanced, examination of the local actors and internal drivers, and more specifically how political, tribal, and personal dynamics, and later external involvement, influenced the calculations of local individuals and communities. Brandt gives voice to the very remote and local narratives of the Huthi conflict that have been largely overlooked or marginalized, especially as it has evolved and widened beyond the Saʿdah region and Yemen's borders.

Tribes and Politics in Yemen “gives attention to the wide spectrum of local causes that explain the conflict's onset, persistence, and expansion: shifting internal power balances, the uneven distribution of resources and political participation, the accumulation of mutual grievances, growing sectarianism and tribalization” (p. 2). Brandt's “bottom-up” social anthropological approach provides an oft-overlooked piece of the mosaic that is the Huthi conflict, and helps the reader to better understand the interplay between local, regional, and international actors party to the armed conflict. While external actors and factors have played a significant role, many of the factors that gave root to, and continue to influence the course of the Huthi conflict are local. Brandt provides local context for the involvement of external actors and a window into the impact, whether real or perceived, such involvement has had in reshaping internal perceptions of the Huthi movement and local narratives surrounding Saʿdah.

Brandt's blending of ethnographic fieldwork and extensive interviews with local actors, along with primary and secondary source materials, challenges, but does not outright reject, many of the much-touted regional proxy war, tribal feuding, and sectarian conflict narratives that have dominated headlines since armed Huthi rebels took control of the Yemeni capital of Sanaʿaʾ in 2014. Rather, Brandt argues that the Huthi conflict represents a type of “‘hybrid’ war […] whose political, ideological, military, tribal, sectarian, and personal motivations kept oscillating” (p. 351). Intimate accounts of local developments and attention to detail in Brandt's analysis of the rise of the Huthi movement, in Yemen's remote northern highlands, and the movements transformation over time and space provides for a more nuanced and comprehensive picture of the multifaceted conflict, allowing for a better understanding of the local actors, “grassroots” dynamics, and the factors that have contributed to the regionalization of what had been a largely local conflict. Indeed, as Brandt argues, “external factors, too, contributed to the prolongation and proliferation of the war. The conflict developed a momentum of its own within a wider framework that drew on separate local, domestic and international forces” (p. 352).

The effectiveness of Brandt's work lies not only in the methodology of the study, but also in the organization of the book. Through its chronological structure, Tribes and Politics in Yemen provides a widely accessible and much needed contribution to the study of not only the complexities of local politics in Yemen, but more broadly to conflict and security studies, political science, and methods for ethnographic and anthropological fieldwork. The acknowledgements, preface, and introduction underscore the academic rigor of Brandt's undertaking, from efforts to limit potential bias associated with relying on first-hand accounts and interviews, to consultations on historical facts and peer reviewers of various aspects of the manuscript from recognized experts from a number of disciplines. All of which add to the strength and accessibility of Tribes and Politics in Yemen.

The book's introductory chapters contain a wealth of information with regards to methodology, source material, and structure, as well as an introduction to the geography and social diversity of Yemen's extreme northern regions. The chapters that follow in Part 1 give historical and background information on elite transformation in Yemen and Saudi–Yemeni relations, and provide a foundation for examining religious sects in politics in Yemen, setting the stage and providing context for the local narratives that follow. The chapters that make up Part 2 focus on the evolution of the conflict, failed mediation attempts, and Huthi expansionism following the end of the last Saʿdah conflict in 2010. Tribes and Politics in Yemen concludes with a very thoughtful, comprehensive, and concise summary of the conflicts and their aftermath. Reflecting on events since the fall of Sanaʿaʾ, Brandt remarks that “its fall, however, is far from the end of the story, but rather the beginning of a new, even more prominent chain of events” (p.354). This statement underscores the complexity of the Houthi conflict and the need for works such as this.

Tribes and Politics in Yemen provides local perspectives and insights into the increasingly complex and multifaceted dynamics of this conflict. Brandt's focus on the local developments and narratives provides a great deal of context for understanding the evolution of a relatively small social movement into a full-fledged insurgency that contributed to the ouster of President Salih, and the expulsion of the Hadi government from the Yemeni capital of Sanaʿaʾ, which in turn resulted in a large-scale military intervention led by Saudi Arabia and contributed to one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Beyond the book's immediate focus of the Saʿdah conflict, the methodology of Brandt's research stands on its own as an important contribution to the social anthropological field, providing a prime case of study for those pursuing such fieldwork and research in conflict zones. Tribes and Politics in Yemen contains a wealth of information for military historians, political scientists, and social anthropologists alike, while being structured and written in such a way as to be accessible to an audience beyond academia who want to learn more about the Huthi conflict and the complexities of local politics in Yemen.