The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century Hardcover - 2008 - 1st Edition
by Coll, Steve
- Used
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the national bestsellerGhost Wars, Steve Coll presents the story of the Bin Laden family'srise to power and privilege, revealing new information to show howAmerican influences changed the family and how one member'srebellion changed America
The Bin Ladens rose from poverty to privilege; theyloyally served the Saudi royal family for generations and thenone of their number changed history on September 11, 2001.Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll tells the epic storyof the rise of the Bin Laden family and of the wildly diverselifestyles of the generation to which Osama bin Laden belongs,and against whom he rebelled. Starting with the family's escapefrom famine at the beginning of the twentieth century throughits jet-set era in America after the 1970s oil boom, and finallyto the family's attempts to recover from September 11, The BinLadens unearths extensive new material about the family andits relationship with the United States, and provides a richlyrevealing and emblematic narrative of our globally interconnectedtimes.
To a much greater extent than has been previouslyunderstood, the Bin Laden family owned an impressiveshare of the America upon which Osama ultimately declaredwar shopping centers, apartment complexes, luxury estates,privatized prisons in Massachusetts, corporate stocks, an airport,and much more. They financed Hollywood movies andnegotiated over real estate with Donald Trump. They came toregard George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Prince Charlesas friends of their family. And yet, as was true of the largerrelationship between the Saudi and American governments,when tested by Osama's violence, the family's involvement inthe United States proved to be narrow and brittle.
Among the many memorable figures that cross thesepages is Osama's older brother, Salem a free-living, chainsmoking,guitar-strumming pilot, adventurer, and businessmanwho cavorted across America and Europe and once proposedmarriage 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 anotherforce in the narrative an illiterate bricklayer who created thefamily fortune through perspicacity and wit, until his suddendeath in an airplane crash in 1967, an accident caused by anerror by his American pilot.
At the story's heart lies an immigrant family'sattempt to adapt simultaneously to Saudi Arabia's puritanismand America's myriad temptations. The family generation towhich Osama belonged twenty-five brothers and twenty-ninesisters had to cope with intense change. Most of them wereborn into a poor society where religion dominated public life.Yet by the time they became young adults, these Bin Ladensfound themselves bombarded by Western-influenced ideasabout individual choice, by gleaming new shopping malls andinternational fashion brands, by Hollywood movies and changingsexual mores a dizzying world that was theirs for the taking,because they each received annual dividends that started inthe hundreds of thousands of dollars. How they navigated thesedemands is an authentic, humanizing story of Saudi Arabia,America, and the sources of attraction and repulsion still presentin the countries' awkward embrace.
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Details
- Title The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
- Author Coll, Steve
- Binding Hardcover
- Edition number 1st
- Edition 1
- Condition Used - Very Good
- Pages 688
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Penguin Press, New York
- Date 2008-04-01
- Illustrated Yes
- Bookseller's Inventory # L07A-02383
- ISBN 9781594201646 / 1594201641
- Weight 2.17 lbs (0.98 kg)
- Dimensions 9.56 x 6.46 x 1.39 in (24.28 x 16.41 x 3.53 cm)
- Ages 18 to UP years
- Grade levels 13 - UP
- Library of Congress subjects Saudi Arabia - History - 20th century, Saudi Arabia - Kings and rulers
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 2007042748
- Dewey Decimal Code B
Summary
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.
