THIS ENTERTAINING BOOK chronicles the extraordinary Britons and Americans who have chosen to seek out and travel with nomads, focusing on the experiences of visitors to tribes in four territories: the Arabian peninsula, with its Bedouin; the Sahara, with its Moors and Tuareg; the mountain ranges of Southern Iran, with their migratory pastoral tribes; and the steppes of Central Asia, with their Mongol horsemen and Tartar descendants. John Ure, a former British ambassador to Brazil and Cuba who gives 'travelling uncomfortably in remote places and writing about it comfortably afterwards' as his recreation in Who's Who, has made journeys with tribes in each of the four areas, and is thus well qualified to write this primer to wanderlust-struck Westerners.

Ure attempts to explain the: fascination of the nomadic life. 'It can be argued that the attraction has in part been one of region rather than of role - that is, the desert itself rather than the migrant nature of its peoples has been the draw.' However, as his examples