Thesiger crossed the Empty Quarter twice in the late forties, on camels, with a few Bedu who’d have gotten there a lot faster without him. His paper job was scouting locust grounds for the British. Everybody knew that was an excuse to be out there. What he found was a way of living he rated above anything back home: Guys who owned nothing, went hungry as a matter of course, and would still hand a stranger the last of the food. Two young Rashid, bin Kabina and bin Ghabaisha, run through the whole book. He wrote it knowing the thing was already finished. The oil crews were coming, the trucks were coming, and he says so flat out, and says too that he had no business grieving a life the Bedu might be glad to leave. The prose is dry and hard, same as the country.