While not as good as 'Teak Wallah' by Reginald Campbell, this memoir covers a longer period, 1928-1950 rather than about 1919-1922. Both describe a vanished world of teak logging by a handful of mainly British managers and overseers, a hard life at risk of accident and disease. Arnold Lawson has a spare style, to the point of brusqueness, clinically factual. The title of the book is a perfect illustration of this! Unlike Campbell, Lawson has little time for descriptions of the environment of in-depth character sketches. ( )