The Bin Ladens : An Arabian Family in the American Century

From Publishers WeeklyThe bin Ladens are famous for spawning the world's foremost terrorist and building one of the Middle East's foremost corporate dynasties. Pulitzer Prizewinner Coll (__Ghost Wars__) delivers a sprawling history of the multifaceted clan, paying special attention to its two most emblematic members. Patriarch Mohamed's eldest son, Salem, was a caricature of the self-indulgent plutocrat: a flamboyant jet-setter dependent on the Saudi monarchy, obsessed with all things motorized (he died crashing his plane after a day's joy-riding atop motorcycle and dune-buggy) and forever tormenting his entourage with off-key karaoke. Coll presents quite a contrast with an unusually nuanced profile of Salem's half-brother Osama, a shy, austere, devout man who nonetheless shares Salem's egomania. Other bin Ladens crowd Coll's narrative with the eye-glazing details of their murky business deals, messy divorces and ill-advised perfume lines and pop CDs. Beneath the clutter one discerns an engrossing portrait of a family torn between tradition and modernity, conformism and self-actualization, and desperately in search of its soul. __(April 1)__ Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistThe sprawling and immensely wealthy Bin Laden family has a past and present far more complex and interesting than that of one middle-aged man holed up in the borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Coll,a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and a staff writer for the New Yorker, has written an impressive family saga that spans three generations andfour continents and intersects with some of the key eventsof the last century. Osama is, of course, part of this story, but he isnt necessarily the most interesting or even the most important family member. Coll begins with an examination of the life and career of the family patriarch, Mohamed, whowas born in poverty in southern Yemen, where he toiled in menial jobs. As a teenager, he immigrated to the port city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. His cleverness and ambition meshed perfectly with the building boom fueled by the oil revenues of the Saudi royal family. Before his death in 1967, Mohamed had fatheredmore than50 children by various wives, and Coll offers portraits of some of them. He effectively shows how the creation of the Bin Laden family fortune was, and continues to be, tightly bound to the fate of the Saudi royal family. This is a well-done, sweeping chronicle of a clan that continues to exert worldwide power and influence. --Jay Freeman

two-time Pulitzer Prize Winner And Author Of The National Bestseller ghost Wars, Steve Coll Presents The Story Of The Bin Laden Family's Rise To Power And Privilege, Revealing New Information To Show How American Influences Changed The Family And How One Member's Rebellion Changed America

The Bin Ladens Rose From Poverty To Privilege; They Loyally Served The Saudi Royal Family For Generations-and Then One Of Their Number Changed History On September 11, 2001. Two-time Pulitzer Prize Winner Steve Coll Tells The Epic Story Of The Rise Of The Bin Laden Family And Of The Wildly Diverse Lifestyles Of The Generation To Which Osama Bin Laden Belongs, And Against Whom He Rebelled. Starting With The Family's Escape From Famine At The Beginning Of The Twentieth Century Through Its Jet-set Era In America After The 1970s Oil Boom, And Finally To The Family's Attempts To Recover From September 11, the Bin Ladens Unearths Extensive New Material About The Family And Its Relationship With The United States, And Provides A Richly Revealing And Emblematic Narrative Of Our Globally Interconnected Times.

To A Much Greater Extent Than Has Been Previously Understood, The Bin Laden Family Owned An Impressive Share Of The America Upon Which Osama Ultimately Declared War-shopping Centers, Apartment Complexes, Luxury Estates, Privatized Prisons In Massachusetts, Corporate Stocks, An Airport, And Much More. They Financed Hollywood Movies And Negotiated Over Real Estate With Donald Trump. They Came To Regard George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, And Prince Charles As Friends Of Their Family. And Yet, As Was True Of The Larger Relationship Between The Saudi And American Governments, When Tested By Osama's Violence, The Family's Involvement In The United States Proved To Be Narrow And Brittle.

Among The Many Memorable Figures That Cross These Pages Is Osama's Older Brother, Salem-a Free-living, Chainsmoking, Guitar-strumming Pilot, Adventurer, And Businessman Who Cavorted Across America And Europe And Once Proposed Marriage To Four American And European Girlfriends Simultaneously, Attempting To Win A Bet With The King Of Saudi Arabia. Osama And Salem's Father, Mohamed Bin Laden, Is Another Force In The Narrative-an Illiterate Bricklayer Who Created The Family Fortune Through Perspicacity And Wit, Until His Sudden Death In An Airplane Crash In 1967, An Accident Caused By An Error By His American Pilot.

At The Story's Heart Lies An Immigrant Family's Attempt To Adapt Simultaneously To Saudi Arabia's Puritanism And America's Myriad Temptations. The Family Generation To Which Osama Belonged-twenty-five Brothers And Twenty-nine Sisters-had To Cope With Intense Change. Most Of Them Were Born Into A Poor Society Where Religion Dominated Public Life. Yet By The Time They Became Young Adults, These Bin Ladens Found Themselves Bombarded By Western-influenced Ideas About Individual Choice, By Gleaming New Shopping Malls And International Fashion Brands, By Hollywood Movies And Changing Sexual Mores-a Dizzying World That Was Theirs For The Taking, Because They Each Received Annual Dividends That Started In The Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars. How They Navigated These Demands Is An Authentic, Humanizing Story Of Saudi Arabia, America, And The Sources Of Attraction And Repulsion Still Present In The Countries' Awkward Embrace.

the New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

steve Coll's Riveting New Book Not Only Gives Us The Most Psychologically Detailed Portrait Of The Brutal 9/11 Mastermind Yet, But In Telling The Epic Story Of Osama Bin Laden's Extended Family, It Also Reveals The Crucial Role That His Relatives And Their Relationship With The Royal House Of Saud Played In Shaping His Thinking, His Ambitions, His Technological Expertise And His Tactics…it Is A Book That Possesses The Novelistic Energy Of A Rags-to-riches Family Epic, Following Its Sprawling Cast Of Characters As They Travel From Mecca And Medina To Las Vegas And Disney World, And Yet, At The Same Time, It Is A Book That, In Tracing The Connections Between The Public And The Private, The Political And The Personal, Stands As A Substantive Bookend To Mr. Coll's Pulitzer-prize-winning 2004 Book, ghost Wars: The Secret History Of The C.i.a., Afghanistan, And Bin Laden, From The Soviet Invasion To Sept. 10, 2001.

The rise and rise of the Bin Laden family is one of the great stories of the twentieth century; its repercussions have already deeply marked the twenty-first. Until now, however, it is a story that has never been fully told, as the Bin Ladens have successfully fended off attempts to understand the family circles from which Osama sprang. In this the family has been abetted by the kingdom it calls home, Saudi Arabia, one of the most closed societies on earth. Steve Coll’s The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century is the groundbreaking history of a family and its fortune. It chronicles a young illiterate Yemeni bricklayer, Mohamed Bin Laden, who went to the new, oil-rich country of Saudi Arabia and quickly became a vital figure in its development, building great mosques and highways and making himself and many of his children millionaires. It is also a story of the Saudi royal family, whom the Bin Ladens served loyally and without whose capricious favor they would have been nothing. And it is a story of tensions and contradictions in a country founded on extreme religious purity, which then became awash in oil money and dazzled by the temptations of the West. In only two generations the Bin Ladens moved from a famine-stricken desert canyon to luxury jets, yachts, and private compounds around the world, even going into business with Hollywood celebrities. These religious and cultural gyrations resulted in everything from enthusiasm for America—exemplified by Osama’s free-living pilot brother Salem—to an overwhelming determination to destroy it. The Bin Ladens is a meticulously researched, colorful, shocking, entertaining, and disturbing narrative of global integration and its limitations. It encapsulates the unsettling contradictions of globalization in the story of a single family who has used money, mobility, and technology to dramatically varied ends. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap "Riveting . . . The most psychologically detailed portrait of the brutal 9/11 mastermind yet." - Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times In The Bin Ladens , two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Steve Coll continues where Ghost Wars left off, shedding new light on one of the most elusive families of the twenty-first century. Rising from a famine-stricken desert into luxury, private compounds, and even business deals with Hollywood celebrities, the Bin Ladens have benefited from the tensions and contradictions in a country founded on extreme religious purity, suddenly thrust into a world awash in oil, money, and the temptations of the West. But what do these incongruities mean for globalization, the War on Terror, and America's place in the Middle East? Meticulously researched, The Bin Ladens is the story of a remarkably varied and often dangerous family that has used money, mobility, and technology to dramatically different ends. Patriarchs 1900 to September 1967. In exile The royal garage Silent partners The glory of his reign For Jerusalem The backlash A modern man Crosswind Sons and daughters October 1967 to May 1988 The guardians Young Osama Realm of conspiracy The rising son Discovering America The convert's zeal Wired The amusement park In the king's service Anxiety disorder The grinder The arms bazaar Off the books The proposal Kitty Hawk field of dreams The global family June 1988 to September 2001 Writer-director-producer Lump sums America in motion The Swiss accounts A Rolls Royce in the rain The construction of exile Hedge funds A trojan desk The aesthetics of worship One phone, one world Lawyers, guns and money Bin Laden island Legacies September 2001 to September 2007 The name Public relations Brands So what? In exile. In The Bin Ladens , two- time Pulitzer Prize-winner Steve Coll continues where Ghost Wars left off, shedding new light on one of the most elusive families of the twenty-first century. Rising from a famine-stricken desert into luxury, private compounds, and even business deals with Hollywood celebrities, the Bin Ladens have benefited from the tensions and contradictions in a country founded on extreme religious purity, suddenly thrust into a world awash in oil, money, and the temptations of the West. But what do these incongruities mean for globalization, the War on Terror, and America's place in the Middle East? Meticulously researched, The Bin Ladens is the story of a remarkably varied and often dangerous family that has used money, mobility, and technology to dramatically different ends. The Bin Ladens rose from poverty to privilege; they loyally served the Saudi royal family for generations--and then one of their number changed history on September 11, 2001. Journalist Steve Coll tells the story of the rise of the Bin Laden family and of the wildly diverse lifestyles of the generation to which Osama bin Laden belongs, and against whom he rebelled. Starting with the family's escape from famine at the beginning of the twentieth century, through its jet-set era in America after the 1970s oil boom, and finally to the family's attempts to recover from September 11, this book unearths extensive new material about the family and its relationship with the United States, and provides a richly revealing and emblematic narrative of our globally interconnected times.--From publisher description