Black Tents of Arabia

BLACK TENTS OF ARABIA, by Carl Raswan, has been praised as a love story, as an adventure story, as a travel book, and as an insider's vision of a much-misunderstood people. It is all of those things, and if Raswan had been given a free hand it would also have been a definitive study of the Arabian Horse; but the editors of Little, Brown, and Company were not horsemen, and in 1934 Raswan was not yet famous enough to override them. They made him condense the story of his first year in Arabia to a single chapter, and rearrange the other material to keep the love-story up front. "I suppose it made a better book," Raswan commented wistfully, "though they made me leave out enough for several more." It made a book that has been loved in all its incarnations for sixty-seven years; but horse-lovers have always wished there were more about horses in it, and Mrs. Carl Raswan has expanded this edition to include a selection of her husband's early articles. Readers can learn more about his first trip to Arabia in his adventure book Drinkers of The Wind, and more about Arabian-breeding in The Arab and His Horse and The RASWAN INDEX. All three are available from Mrs. Carl Raswan, 16002 Walnut Creek, San Antonio, TX 78247.