The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger. Between 1951and 1958 Wilfred Thesiger spent several months of each year living among the tribal Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq. He gradually won acceptance, as he travelled from village to village by canoe, dispensing medicine & advice. He came to understand & share a way of life that had endured for many centuries. Thesiger has written a testament to what was an almost untouched & yet threatened culture in 1950’s Iraq, a culture that lived an entirely water dominated existence. An introduction by Jon Lee Anderson discusses Thesiger’s views of the places he visited & the hospitable, loyal, & courageous people he encountered, as well as Saddam Hussein’s destruction of the marshlands & the possibilities for their restoration.