I had heard this was the definitive work on the desert country but never had gotten around to reading it. I now have and it is terrific - every thing it's cracked up to be. I had read Michael Asher's biography; I had been in Ethiopia, Oman and Yemen; I traveled in the Hadhramaut -- all of this over fifty years later but still there is the flavor of Thesiger's days. His writing of crossing the Empty Quarter was a precursor of Asher's more recent writings about desert travels. He writes well and keeps the reader completely caught up with his trek. There is a sadness, on Thesiger's part (and mine), that as progress has affected the Bedu life, the stability of the old days is no more. But for a loving report on life as it used to be with the Bedu tribes, I whole heartedly recommend Arabian Sands. (I should not Rory Stewart's introduction was worth the price of the book)

While waiting for my inter-library loan of Arabian Sands to show up I pulled THE LAST NOMAD (same author) off my librarys shelf. Turns out they are the same book! Same tho only in text. The Last Nomad is a big 20" x 20" book filled with BIG beautiful black and white photos Some full page and a few even two page spreads. Tho they do suffer from being black and white imho, Wilfred Thesiger is an excellent photographer. The "portraits" of the people are wonderful.

So FORGET ARABIAN SANDS. Arabian Sands is a small 7.8 x 5.1 book with small dark pictures. And not all the pictures to boot.

My favorite part was the Iraq Marshes (1950-'58). The stunning "buildings" the Marsh Arabs made solely from the TWENTY foot tall reeds that grew there. WOW.
This is the area where the rivers Tigris and Euphrates join, and is thought by some to be the original site of the Garden of Eden.

"The 5,000-year-old way of life of the Marsh Arabs, celebrated by Wilfred Thesiger among others, has long been under threat. Its final disappearance is documented in The Iraqi Marshlands edited by Emma Nicholson and Peter Clark. Saddam Hussein's aggressive drainage programme in the 1990s, in pursute of rebels hiding in the waterways, turned much of the marshland into desert, depopulating the area. Some 200,000 of the inhabitants fled, many of them to refugee camps in Iran. The damage is probably irretrievable."

Dams in Turkey, Syria and Iran have further reduce the amount of water flowing down the Tigris and Euphrates. All the bird and wildlife is lost. Latest satellite images show that less than 7% of the Mesopotamian marshes now remain intact.

What confuses me is the contrast between the various "modern" tribes and the stunningly huge, beautiful and complex brick buildings built thousands of years ago by their ancestors. I can't seem to connect the two. What happened to them? How is it possible to regress so?

An excellent travel adventure through the Arabian deserts in the early part of the 20th century. For anyone who wants to understand the Arab mind/viewpoint or who just loves tales of far away places and exotic locales this book will make an excellent read.

Agreed, this is a top notch book if you want to know what "the "Bedu" life was like sixty years ago in what is now Saudi Arabia. In that respect, I'm in complete concurrence with the other glowing reviews. But, as another reviewer has brought up, there's something missing here: Thesiger. Having read this book, I feel I know much more about camels, Bedu culture and desert travel. I even feel I know and like Thesiger's Bedu companions very well. But Thesiger himself? A bit of a mystery.

Yes, Thesiger mentions his dislike of machines and modern society. But, I don't really get a "feel" for what he's all about here. I suppose his perspective as presented here could best be denominated Stoic (although another reviewer speculates masochism may play a part). But, even then, Thesiger is no Marcus Aurelius, and any meditations or introspection are scant as the desert brush. -Can any reader imagine Thesiger meditating like M.A. on such questions as, "What is life but a warfare and a stranger's sojourn?" - Reflections, or at least the disclosing of them, are simply not his gulp of brackish well water.

Others are obviously quite content with a narrator about whose inner life they know next to nothing. But I was left after reading this book with a listless, arid feeling, with any sense of "INNER cosmography" (to borrow from Thoreau) remaining unmapped.

I give it 3 stars for being interesting, for being exotic enough to draw me in for 100 pages, and for the author's clear descriptive writing. It would get more stars if it had developed any kind of a plot in those 100 pages -- I did not go further.

I did, though, learn how to make a camel lower it's milk. That little lesson alone was worth the time (I won't be doing THAT any time soon... I won't say how this feat is accomplished, but let me say that a Bedu who does this must want that milk badly).

Really, it is like a travelog in that it takes you along with him on desert journeys. Not too much adventure here, though, in the first 100 pp.