Books: Brothers of the Desert

BLACK TENTS OF ARABIA—Carl R. Raswan—Little, Brown ($4).

In 1912 Carl Raswan, a German horse-breeder who spent much of his life in the East, visited the Ruala Bedouins, who were then camped near the edge of the great Nufud desert, some 120 miles east of Damascus. Raswan had been drawn there by his admiration for magnificent Arabian horses, wanted to learn their history and the secrets of their breeding, found his task greatly simplified when the 8-year-old son of his host accidentally hit him between the eyes with a stone from his slingshot....