Book excerpt: Why were urban women veiled in early 1900s, unveiled 1936 to 1979, and reveiled after 1979 revolution? This question is the basis of Hamideh Sedghi's contribution to politics and Middle Eastern studies. Sedghi gives new knowledge on women's agency in relation to state power. She places contention over women at center of political struggle between secular and religious forces and shows that control over women's identities, sexuality, and labor has been central to consolidation of state power. She links politics and culture with economics to present an analysis of private and public lives of different classes of women and their modes of resistance to state power. Sedghi incorporates women in Iranian history, focuses on state-gender-religion relations and addresses women's responses to Iranian state, women's agency, and their resistance-- Publisher's description.