To manage the complex of schools, roads, dams and hospitals now going up in Saudi Arabia, King Faisal—says author Vincent Sheean—is creating a civil service already better than some of the systems on which it was modeled.

Out of the silent moonlit sky came the bombers, to drop their cargoes on the broad, brightly-lit and defenseless targets below. The war had come to Arabia.

Despite the great and very special problems of survival which they face, Arabia's wild mammals are surprisingly numerous. And in ways as varied as the desert's challenges, the mammals have evolved to overcome them.

In her rich history she has had many names—"Mother of the World," "Door to the Ultimate Happiness" and "City Guarded by God." But none is more fitting than the one she bears now: Istanbul, meaning simply "The City".

For 15 years the expedition had combed the Gulf for traces of its past. Now, and at last, they could begin their search in the virtually untouched, and largely unexplored areas of Saudi Arabia.

And what, pray tell, is the Mongrel? It's a stripped-down, turned-on, onetime bug called the "Desert Fun Car" that's been raising lots of dust around northern Saudi Arabia lately, that's what; a creature of uncertain pedigree, ugly perhaps, but lovable.