Clinton Bailey is a Research Fellow on Bedouin culture at Trinity College, Hartford. He has been an advocate and activist on behalf of Bedouin civil rights in Israel since 1978 and has served as consultant on Bedouin culture to the BBC, the British Museum, and the Museum of Bedouin Culture in Kibbutz Lahav, Israel. He is the author of A Culture of Desert Survival: Bedouin Proverbs from Sinai and the Negev, published by Yale University Press; and Bedouin Poetry from Sinai and the Negev: Mirror of a Culture, published by Oxford University Press.

“Clinton Bailey is an extraordinary master of Bedouin culture, bringing to us the beauty of Bedouin poetry and way of life. Now he has turned to a subject of equal fascination: Bedouin law, fashioned from the traditions of nomadic life and a keen sense of justice.  Bailey’s book has deep meaning for anyone interested in distant cultures and in how the concept of law develops in a society.”—Anthony Lewis, author of Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment