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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.
Biography of Family
| Customer Rating:  | Steve Coll's latest book, The Bin Ladens, is an excellent successor to his previous, Ghost Wars, about the wars in Afghanistan over the last 30 years. With excellent prose and well researched documentation, Coll provides rich detail on an otherwise unknown history. Specifically, that the family that bread the terrorist who committed the worst attack on US soil has also contributed a significant amount of business development in the Middle East and the United States.
Coll's thesis is that the Bin Laden family, beginning with the family patriarch Muhammad Bin Laden in the early 20th century, created a large amount of wealth and developed multiple personalities at the same time as the United States and especially Saudi Arabia.
The Bin Laden's have leaned heavily on early connections established with the royal family of Saudi Arabia. As Saudi Arabia grew with the discovery of oil, the riches of the family also grew with the accumulation of construction contracts. As their wealth grew, they also became more interested in more cosmopolitan pursuits. And as these pursuits expanded, many of the family gravitated towards the most economically vibrant country during the Cold War, the United States.
As with any large institution, different wings grew up in the family. A religiously conservative wing of course developed, and Osama was a member of this wing. However, a liberal, open minded wing also developed.
Overall, Steve Coll has put together much research that is likely unknown to many in the west. This excellent book should be on the reading lists of many who are trying to understand how this one particular family developed the way they did, and how the roots of Osama Bin Laden are also intertwined with the incredible economic development of both the West and the oil rich Middle East.
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Insightful exploration and solid research reveal interesting themes in the history of the Bin Ladens and Saudi Arabia
| Customer Rating: | In a style reminiscent of the Pulitzer Prize winning "Ghost Wars", Steve Coll examines the history of the Bin Laden family. In order to reveal the complex forces at work on the Bin Laden family members throughout the past century, Coll utilizes a variety of different sources. The most fascinating, in my opinion, is the information he extracts personally from interviews.
Coll explores the behavior of Bin Laden family members as it should be explored; he constructs an eloquent history of the social, political, and economic forces at work in Saudi Arabia and focuses on the Bin Laden family's primary patron and guardian: the Saudi Royal Family. Coll reveals fascinating personalities of Bin Laden family members not by rambling in imprecise terms; he describes, using annotated sources, the way they reacted to a wide range of situations and then draws calculated and enlightening conclusions based on historical fact.
"The Bin Ladens" is accurate. So are the most boring of textbooks. Accuracy, in this case, does not come at the price of overly intellectual rhetoric or cluttered prose. This book reads more like story than a history textbook, essay, or newspaper article. If you were a fan of "Ghost Wars" or are simply curious to learn more about the Bin Laden family/Saudi Arabian History/Middle Eastern Construction in general, then I think this is worth your time.
Cheers. |
bordering on fraudulent
| Customer Rating: | well, not this book actually, but a related book by Coll's colleague Parag Khanna titled The Second World.
Some of the various, and numerous, factual errors that riddle the book are relatively trivial, but suggest serious sloppiness and disregard for getting facts right. For example, Yugoslavia was not part of Warsaw pact, as Khanna states. Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov was appointed to office in 1992 by Boris Yeltsin, and not by Vladimir Putin. Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Albania are not all smaller by population than Manhattan, and the death toll from the civil wars in former Yugoslavia was not greater than half a million. Other obviously wrong assertions seem to be made up simply to provide lurid background color to Khanna's travelogue: the former KGB headquarters in Moscow has not been turned into "a high-class disco," expensive Moscow malls do not charge entrance fees, and police road checkpoints in Uzbekistan do not stop and check all vehicles. And other gross misstatements of fact display a simple complete lack of understanding the history and culture of the countries of which he writes: the (Orthodox) Uspenky cave monastery in Crimea is not representative of Ukraine's "proud Catholic heritage," Zoran Djindjic was not the first democratically elected leader since World War II in former Yugoslavia , and in the 1980s Yugoslav republics like Bosnia and Macedonia were not richer than Spain. Many of Khanna's wildly wrong claims sound like local myths that he has taken at face value. I can easily imagine some misguided elderly Belgrade resident waxing nostalgically for the days "when every one of our republics was richer than Spain!"
Yet more of Khanna's assertions are not merely factually wrong, but far exceed the ludicrous. In the fast paced and dangerous Russian business world, "one is safe only in the sauna, where everyone is naked and no weapons are allowed." It was news to me to learn from Khanna that every winter "waves" of Russians and "thousands of Ukrainians" freeze to death in "crumbling heatless apartment blocks." And he employs gross mischaracterizations of fact to buttress his claims. For example, according to Khanna, in 2006 Greek GDP increased 25% when the government started to account for prostitution and cigarette smuggling in its figures. In fact, the government said it would include all unreported economic activity, mostly in construction and trade, but including a "small" amount for illegal activities such as smuggling. And this is merely a sampling of patently ridiculous claims.
And for a "foreign policy whiz-kid," Khanna makes numerous and serious analytical mistakes, showing a clear misunderstanding of economics, international institutions, and international relations. The unhedged statement, "Russia's diplomatic position is purely residual," will surely surprise diplomats from Brussels to Tokyo. Noting that Gazprom's market capitalization is $300 billion leads Khanna to the conclusion that Gazprom is one third of the Russian economy, confusing market capitalization with GDP. And his bald assertion that "[n]one of Central Asian legal systems have evolved beyond Kakfaaesque" is belied by the numerous successful legislative accomplishments of Kazakhstan and its quite sophisticated legal code, for example.
But the worst moments of Khanna's book are when he quotes conversations that seem of such dubious authenticity as to make me believe they may be fabricated, or at best the result of very selective reporting, only relating those comments that fit within his pre-existing views. "'Our pride has suffered'" explains a "Moscow intellectual over a narrow glass of [of course] ice-chilled vodka, `but this only drives our nationalism further.'" In Kiev, the locals "give lifts to strangers for a token fare." Why? "We suffered enough together, so we still trust each other." There are just too many such (anonymous) quotations that fail to ring true to trust in the author's integrity. And he also reports statements by national leaders as if they were heard in personal conversation, yet in a curiously indirect fashion that suggests otherwise.
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Fascinating, but should have covered Saudi Arabia itself more
| Customer Rating:  | This book covers the Bin Laden family and their rise to prominence in great detail, especially the founding father and his two succeeding songs. It is fairly sympathetic to the Bin Ladens. They got a very raw deal from their black sheep.
And Osama in all this? He's mostly off stage, because there was little in the way of written records (and probably because Mr. Coll didn't get all the access he might have wished for). Mr. Coll describes him in an fairly condescending way: he's pious and competent, but hardly an brilliant figure. For example he's described as a strictly so-so businessman. In fact, Steve Coll covered him rather better in Ghost Wars.
Is it wise to describe a successful enemy as a second rater? Not necessarily, but it is customary. Would it have been smart marketing to sing the praises of Osama's organizing skills, assuming he has any? Certainly not.
More interesting really, are the sideways glances we get of Saudi Arabia itself. Or rather, the Saud family, whom I find pretty disgusting. Their sloth, hypocrisy, decadence and the mess they have made with their wealth is appalling. Odd how they could manage to build so many palace without providing for basic necessities for their subjects. Later on, that changed to modern day bread and circus: "Don't vote, don't criticize. In return you won't have to work."
And just in case not enough citizens agree, they bribe one of the most intolerant branches of Islam to declare that the frequently terminally alcoholic Al Sauds kings are Defenders of the Faith against all the godless heathen everywhere. Bit like Jerry Falwell declaring the frat-boy era Bush the supreme guarantor of Christian morals. I would have loved to learn more about that devil's bargain and the reasons behind it.
There is one near-surrealist part in which Mr. Coll says that the royals and their Wahhabi cohorts may have paved over an archaeological dig in Medina, of Muhammad's house, in order to create a public sanitation facility.
To be honest, Abdullah, their current king seems to be of the actually temperate and serious kind and perhaps a improvement in progress.
The common people of Saudi Arabia are almost entirely ignored. Yet, you get the feeling that, ruled by a traditional 18th century royal court of lazy bums, they could hardly be expected to be happy with the world at large. In fact, I think Muslims are rather badly served by the lot, though it is not my place to judge. Bit like a period during which the Popes were pretty much all lecherous buffoons.
In short, I would have welcomed more coverage of Saudi Arabia (perhaps so dispelling my prejudices) rather than endless details about Salem Bin Laden's flying skills. As it is, this definitely a family biography.
Enough criticism though. This book remains a fascinating and highly readable account of one facet of the 9/11 events. And it certainly reads almost like a soap opera. |
A good start on a very complex subject
| Customer Rating: | The pieces of the Bin Laden family puzzle have been scattered across numerous continents and decades. With a doggedness that has already won him two Pulitzers, Steve Coll attacks the challenge of bringing these pieces together to form the definitive history of this enigmatic family. From published works to countless interviews with Bin Laden family and associates to long sequestered State Department documents, Coll assiduously mines the data and develops a portrait of one of the most recognizable names in the world. This portrait is immediately recognizable to everyone: money, political power, excess, self-destruction, contradiction, hypocrisy. The lives of the fifty-four children of Mohamed Bin Laden would not be out of place in the pages of the National Enquirer, People, or Forbes. One gets a sense of humanity from this all-powerful Saudi Arabian family. Unfortunately, even with all of this research, Coll's portrait still contains holes, and is far from being the definitive word on the Bin Ladens.
While the collected evidence does flesh out many previously unknown details, it remains thin in those areas that will be of most interest to scholars and casual observers alike. Stories about the Bin Laden's love of flying and ownership of property or the latest gadgets are entertaining, but most readers are going to come to the book expecting a clear understanding of how the most famous Bin Laden fits into the dynamic. Granted, being the relative of the mastermind of the worst terrorist attack in history is bound to shut up even the most chatty individual. Throw in the added dimension of the potential loss of a family fortune through lawsuits related to said person, and the prospects for obtaining any real data becomes thin. Coll acknowledges this throughout The Bin Ladens, but it doesn't lessen the impact. By the end, the reader is left with just as many questions as when they started.
Publicly, the Bin Laden family repudiated and disowned Osama in the early 1990s when he was primarily making trouble in Saudi Arabia. This repudiation only intensified as Osama's terrorist actions increased. Privately, however, the picture is murky. Coll tantalizes with snippets and anecdotes that certain elements of the family may have supported Osama, either tacitly or directly via financial means, but they ultimately end up going nowhere. For instance, near the end of the narrative, he throws out the comment from one of Osama's nieces that "some of the young people at the Bin Laden compound [in Jeddah] openly celebrated the September 11 attacks," but fails to add anything more. Peppered throughout the book are countless examples such as this where the author ultimately has to state that "the record is uncertain" or "the evidence just isn't there."
Even more puzzling is the role that the governments of Saudi Arabia and even the United States played in supporting the Bin Laden family over the years. Why did Saudi Arabia issue diplomatic passports to non-governmental charities suspected of funneling cash to Al Qaeda? Did the FBI treat the issue of terrorist financing so gently because the CIA wrongly estimated its importance as being low, or was there political pressure from on high? What about Bush family friend, Jim Bath's, wild assertion that he ran supplies to Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan for the CIA during a time that the CIA has repeatedly claimed it did not have any contact with Osama? In the end, such unanswered questions leave the book feeling sparse and unfinished.
All in all, though, one does get the impression that many of the deficiencies were caused by stonewalling from those who hold the puzzle pieces as opposed to any deficiencies on Coll's part. This being the first real, in-depth look at such a broad subject as this huge, secretive Saudi Arabian family, The Bin Ladens is an excellent starting point. Researchers will no doubt return to it and use it as the foundation for future treatises on Osama and the larger topic of the Global War on Terror. For that, it most certainly must be praised. |
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