Customer Reviews

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century [With Earbuds] (Playaway Adult Nonfiction)

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When one thinks of Bin Laden, of course, one thinks of Osama, Al Qaeda, and 9-11. However, this book looks at a fascinating family history, with Osama Bin Laden as only one small part of the larger familial tapestry. A genealogy at the front of the book helps to identify the family's background, from Ali (circa 1820) to Aboud, to Awadh (born around 1875) to Mohamed (born around 1905) and Abdullah, brothers who came to bring the family wealth and recognition. Finally, the 54 children of Mohamed Bin Laden, born in the time frame from the mid-1940s through 1967.

Mohamed and his brother grew up in Yemen, in poor circumstances. They suffered bad luck. Finally, they moved to Saudi Arabia and began to become more successful. Mohamed, especially, was the brother with more drive, and the story of the family takes off with the depiction of his worming his way into the royal family's graces by his hard work and willingness to do as he was bid. A "rags to riches" story. . . . The family Saud is, obviously, the central power in a country bearing the family's name (how often does that happen!?).

And that family's history is intertwined with Mohamed's family. This part of the story begins with Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. After working his way upward, Mohamed had the good fortune of beginning to do projects for the royal family. What he did not know about construction, he learned or he hired people who did know what to do. Over time, he became the "go to" person for construction (whether for palaces, or roads, or. . . .) in Saudi Arabia. The quality of his work was sometimes open to question, but his willingness to do whatever the royal family wanted served him well. But enough of a simple chronology.

The book looks at the evolving views of the royal family and the development of Bin Laden's "empire." The story is also filled with tragedy--both Mohamed and perhaps his most promising son, Salem, were killed in air crashes. Osama moved on to a very different life, which is discussed pretty well here. From American support for his work against the Soviet Union to enemy of the United States. . . . An interesting tale here.

Anyway, for readers interested in the Bin Laden family, this represents a very solid piece of work. Research seems done well. Many readers will doubtless come away from this book with a different view of our Saudi "friends."

I enjoyed this book a lot - It's a fascinating history of a family's rise from nothing to high influence in Saudi Arabia. Steve Coll and his team have researched this very well and provide a high resolution story of the Bin Laden family. By their close association to the Royal Family, we find out about the secretive ways in which decisions are/were made.

The middle east is a vastly different place from any other on earth - here's a great insight into a very different culture. If you're into the history of interesting places that influence your every day life, this will not disappoint.

Not sure why a previous reviewer felt compelled to review his life in Saudi instead of the book, but for sure the book is more interesting than his life.

... is Steve Coll. I've experienced the shortcomings of the other kind, and duly criticized them. So it is all the more important to recognize and praise a job very well done. Coll conducted voluminous and meticulous research. He interviewed not only members of the Bin Laden family, but their Arab and Western associates. He put "shoe leather to the pavement," traveling as far as the Bin Laden's ancestral home in the Haudramaut, in the Yemen, even noting that Freya Stark had been there before him, in the `30's. He also researched the public records of divorce cases involving the Bin Laden's, as well as their public financial transactions, concerning houses and companies. As must still be urged of all students in journalism school, he would seek out at least two sources to confirm an event. If he couldn't find them, he'd attribute the story to one person, usually identified. Mainly, he eschewed speculation. Simple principles of good journalism, coupled with much hard work, focused on one of the more compelling families of our age.

I shuttered when I saw the book's length--almost 600 pages. This is a LOT more than I think I will ever need to know. But I was wrong, for among other reasons, it is a book about much more than this one family. I realized that Coll emulated another great journalist, Neil Sheehan, who told the story of the Vietnam War through a principal actor, John Paul Vann. Like Sheehan's book, "A Bright Shining Lie," Coll's is immensely readable; he could have easily gone on for another 400 pages. The book is written for Americans, and part of his skill is to find an American analogy to explain an Arabian event / concept. Consider: "The attitude toward Bin Laden among even a poor but proud Nejdi tribal family, to say nothing of the Al-Saud royal family, was akin to that which a 1950s-era WASP banker executive in New England might hold toward a dark-skinned, grade-school-educated entrepreneurial Sicilian who built his lakeside summer cottage--charming fellow, but keep him away from the girls." (p57). Or, in speaking of the Arab "warriors" who flocked to "jihad" in Afghanistan in the `80's: "Their commitment to the Afghans resembled that of American students who spend a few days a year hammering houses together for the poor. They might be moved by altruism, but they also sought a touch of cool." (p254). Coll leavens his journalistic writing style with a droll wit: "Richard Nixon, better qualified than some world leaders to recognize a man with paranoid and anti-Semitic tendencies..." (p156).

The author delivered on the book's title. He renders believable portraits on the major and minor characters in the family, starting with the founder of the modern dynasty, Mohammad, who was forced to emigrate from the Yemen in the `30's, perhaps passing Freya in the process. He lost an eye on his first job, and was so poor when he arrived in Jeddah that he slept in a ditch. Although Coll does not specifically make the "Horatio Alger" comparison, Mohammad's rise in Arabia was done on that basis: grit, determination, hard work, and, of course, carefully nurtured political contacts. There was Salem, the guitar-playing, karaoke-singing, Sybarite, whose fate was to be forced into the family's "CEO role" at an early age. Though no Human Resources department would have declared him "qualified," overall Salem did an impressive job. Randa was his favorite sister, an impressive Saudi woman in her own right, who just "went down hard," as hard as her father and brother, though not as quickly. And of course Osama himself, most difficult to research, but described in measured and balanced terms, humanized as a painfully shy teenager, who became "born again" (Coll's phrase, on page 201), finding meaning, and perhaps his `missing' father, in religion. He reached for a "CEO role" also, but in a vastly different venture.

Like Sheehen on Vietnam, Coll had numerous insights into the larger context in which the Bin Laden's operated, Saudi Arabia. Unlike Sheehen, who had lived in Vietnam, Coll had never lived in the Kingdom, so his quite perceptive insights on the country, and Western-Saudi interactions, are all the more impressive. Consider: "For many Saudis, Western vice confirmed the precepts of Arabian misogyny, and for many Americans and Europeans, Arabian vices confirmed the precepts of Western racism" p (314). In terms of whether or not the Saudis are "excessively" paranoid, his chapter on the Trojan Desk provides much perspective: "Prince Nayef, the interior minister, presented perhaps the greatest obstacle to trust and cooperation after Fahd's stroke. Nayef was particularly hostile toward the CIA. During the 1970s, the CIA had presented him with a new desk for his office as a gift. Afterwards, Nayef discovered a listening devise on the desk. He had a long memory." Quoting Sami Angawi: "we keep the foreigners out, but everything else you can think of--shopping malls, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald's, neon signs" (we let in)... And for a country with maladroit PR skills, and therefore consequently having reaped far too many negative books about them, Coll says of Carmen bin Laden: "After the terrorist attacks, Carmen chose what many Saudis would regard as the nuclear option: she wrote a book." (!) Indeed. (Explanation point added).

Coll examines numerous conjectures and rumors, puncturing some, for example that Osama lead a wild life in Beirut prior to becoming "born again." Coll also does some judicious speculation, merited in my opinion since we will never really know what happened inside Osama's mind. Coll identifies this speculation when he does it, for example, what effect might have occurred on Osama's youthful mind when he witnessed the massive demolition of building around the Holy Haram in Mecca during a renovation project in the 1960's, and what effect was the fact that he lost both his father and older brother in airplane tragedies that involved Americans?

For a book so meticulously researched and well written, there was one jarring mistake: "In May 2003, Al Qaeda cells inside Saudi Arabia launched a series of mostly ineffectual attacks against the Interior Ministry, American compounds in the oil zones, and against the US consulate in Jeddah." (p 561) This one sentence contains numerous errors, at several different levels. On May 12, 2003, three residential compounds in Riyadh were attacked by suicide bombers. The compounds were neither in the "oil zones," nor were they American, though seven Americans died in the attacks, as did around 43 others. In the subsequent three years there were numerous other attacks, against Western and Saudi targets, including a police headquarters in Riyadh, the US consulate in Jeddah, oil installations in Yanbu, the Oasis compound in Dhahran, French picnickers returning from Madan Saleh, and numerous others. By conducting these attacks, "Al Qaeda" sent a strong, though unintended message, particularly to those Saudis who felt, concerning the attacks of 9-11, that "But you know, at the end of the day, the Americans deserved it." (p 525) The message: It can also happen here. Although the 50 who died on May 12, 2003, and the hundreds who died in subsequent attacks, cannot protest the injudicious use of the word "ineffectual," a rebuke may best come from the ironic ending to Remarque's classic book on World War I: "... he died on a day so quiet and still along the entire front that the high command confined its report to a single sentence: `All Quiet on the Western Front.'"

A couple of points I wished Coll had probed deeper, and taken a more definitive stand. One concerned the birth of Al Qaeda, which he refers to as "...ambiguity present at..." on p 337. This was occurring in 1998, yet the concept of Al Qaeda was used in the trials of the World Trade Center bombers in 1993. In the excellent BBC documentary, "The Power of Nightmares," the producers say that the concept of Al Qaeda was invented during the trials so that the defendants could be prosecuted by laws originally designed for the Mafia. Furthermore, they claimed that Osama liked the concept of an actual network, as opposed to a loose confederation of ideological cohorts who adopted violence for political means, and therefore adopted the term and concept. Coll's opinion on this matter would be valuable.

Finally, concerning Osama's own "disposition," Coll, rightly reluctant to predict the future, suggests at the end that he is still living in the Afghan-Pakistan border area, and that if past is prologue, he will eventually be betrayed. Most plausible, certainly. Why this betrayal has not already happened, given the $25 million price tag on his head, and the history of previous disagreements and betrayals of "colleagues" in the movement, deserves discussion with prudent conjecture. In 2006 I met with then Congresswoman Heather Wilson, of NM First Congressional District, to discuss several concerns. On the "success" of the Bush economy, and future deficit reductions, she was quite positive and loquacious - hum - but as to the question why the United States had not yet caught Osama, I received only silence, and a request for the next question. America deserves more than silence, three years further on.

Overall, an excellent, essential read, and on this topic, I'll chance a prediction: Coll's work will not be superseded, though hopefully additional material will be available for him to update it. The book should be studied in all our universities, as well as by those who continue to read after they graduate.

What a tale. Except it is all true. Whereas Mike Moore threw out facts without much context, Coll provides well-researched history and explanations, making our weird relationship with The House of Saud that much more clear. And Murky.

The Bin Laden Family is far more complex and interesting than I would have thought possible, and as alien and strange, when compared to western society, as you could imagine.

This is an important book, one that provide the curious with information, background, and a glimmer of understanding as to how Osama became who he was, and how his family life, Muslim marital and divorce practices, and the strange, complex, and bizarre entity we know as the Bin Laden family came to be.

The only thing worse than learning how US policies led to 9/11 is seeing how we have coddled and knowingly supported one of the most corrupt family dictatorships in the world - the Sauds. Eye-opening, fascinating and hard to put down. I highly recommend this book.

Coll is an engaging writer. His prose here is even better than in his award-winning "Ghost Wars." He draws the reader completely into the time and frames of the substance of his always interestingly drawn, subjects. He has done a magnificent job of turning the Bin Laden's family history into a mini history of modern Middle Eastern geopolitics, especially as it applies to the U.S.-Saudi relationship.

This history, of course is the story of the Bin Laden family, which consisted of the patriarch, Mohammed, his many wives and his fifty -four children, of which the "black sheep" was the infamous Osama. Oddly, Osama and his terrorist activities become a sidelight here rather than the center of the narrative. For, other than his global mayhem, Osama turns out to have been a thoroughly boring and not very bright member of the family. For those interested only in Osama, may I recommend the book by his sister-in law Carmen bin Laden called "Growing up bin Laden." Carmen has a bead on him as a brewing not very bright or interesting person, who somehow became pious and cast his lot with religion. In any case, Osama certainly is not in the same class as his older brother Salem, who until his accidental death clowning on dune buggies was the center of this story and of much international jet-setting and geopolitical intrigue. Nor was either son as talented or as industrious as their father, Mohammed.

The first half of the book is about how Mohammed's father was forced to flee Yemen (after a borrowed ox had died and he failed to make good on the debt incurred as a result). Mohammed grew up in a small poverty-stricken down of Yemen, but at an early age migrated to Africa and on to Saud Arabia, where he insinuated himself into the good graces of the Saudi royal family. Through grit alone, he turned himself into whatever kind of expert the King needed and then always performed well above expectations. As a result, he was constantly able to enlarge his duties and responsibilities until he was not only the King's number one contractor, but his number one financial fixer as well. As his wealth grew, so too did his influence.

The second half of the book gets into the bin Laden's relationship with the royal family, the oil company consortium Aramco, and its number one sponsor, the USA. Among the most interesting of many interesting and revealing facts is how the Saudi King roped Ronald Reagan into geopolitical debt by clandestinely footing the bill for illicit funding to the contras, hostage-trading with Iran, and supporting Osama as he was losing the fight to the Russians. It was "Charlie Wilson's War" in the flesh.

There is something here for everyone and enough intrigue to fill a good spy novel. A great read. Five Stars.

This book is a great look into the rise of the Bin Laden family. It is a real "rags to riches" story of how the Bin Laden family rose from utter poverty to the highest levels of wealth and power.

The positives of this book is the way the author captures, not only the rise of the Bin Laden family, but also the characters and families outside the Bin Laden family, who helped their ascent. Steve Coll also captures the surrounding geopolitical trends that are sweeping through the word (the rise of terrorism, rise of oil-rich nations, Soviets invading Afghanistan etc) and how the Bin Laden family is intertwined with these issues.

One of the main issues (negative) with the book is that the author focus too much attention on the father, Mohamed, and the first son, Salem....and and as a consequence doesn't devote that much time to the "other" siblings in the family.

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.

For your average reader, this books starts out strong and ends strong and then sags horribly in the middle. There are some good details here about the trajectory of this family that you won't stumble upon in the news. Who Osama's father was, how he was shaped by his family history and life events, where he picked up fanatical religion, how overwhelmingly different he was in terms of his religion from his family and everything he gave up to live out his views--however violent and hypocritical they were. These were all things I wanted to know and my questions were answered in this book.

However, what this book really needed was a really good editor--especially in the middle. I don't believe the average reader needs to know every single item on someone's trip and hundreds of pages in the book are spent on detailing that this person went to Hawaii and did business with the ABC business (which is never picked up again) and then flew to Paris and did business with the XYZ business (which is never picked up again) and then stopped off in Florida...etc., and so forth. These facts don't add anything to the greater understanding of this person and his family to the audience its written for. Giving all these details any considerable thought would not gain the average reader any benefit. I skipped hundreds of pages and almost put it down for good until I identified the three questions I wanted to know and could pick them out of the narrative.

`The Bin Ladens' is a fact-filled yet entertaining history of this larger than life Arabian dynasty. We learn about the family progenitor, Mohamed Bin laden who migrated from his native Yemen to Saudi Arabia as a bricklayer, and ended up being one of the most successful businessmen in the country. The rise of his Bin Laden Construction company coincided with the decision by the Saudi royal family to modernize the country. His work for the Sauds developed into a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship and made Bin Laden rich beyond his wildest dreams. Before his death in 1967, Bin Laden had fathered 54 children with 22 different wives.

When Mohamed died in a plane crash, one of his eldest sons, Salem, became the patriarch of the family. Salem was an interesting character. Unlike his devout father-or his fanatical half-brother Osama-Salem was quite fond of, and comfortable in secular, Western culture. Salem attended college in England, drank alcohol, played in a rock band and chased women. He apparently made a nuisance of himself among the Saudi royals by his constant "outrageous" behavior and his penchant for fart jokes. I actually laughed out loud on a couple of occasions as Coll recounted his antics. Salem had a dark side though. Despite his love of western culture, Islamic traditionalism was embedded in his essence. He apparently once punched an employee for merely speaking to his sister without permission. Salem seems to embody the turbulent and paradoxical relationship that many Saudis have with the west. Salem too died in a plance crash in 1988 in Texas. It is impossible not to notice the ironic connection of Bin Ladens and American aviation. Salem died in Texas as he piloted an ultralight aircraft and the pilot in Mohamed's crash was also an American. The cause of the crash was said to be pilot error.

The most famous Bin Laden is of course, Osama, who Coll thoroughly investigates. From a young age, Osama was quite religious. He was also shy, polite and a bit of a "mama's boy." Initially he was extremely loyal to the Saudi royal family, even after he developed his radical views. It was only after they publicly rebuked him (in the early 90's) for his jihad activities and tried to turn his family against him (in his view) that he turned on them. His animosity towards America is obviously discussed as well, mostly due to the US military presence on Saudi soil, their support for Israel against the Palestinians, and a perceived general attack on Muslims and Islam around the world.

Numerous other Bin Ladens are also discussed, but most of them are much more minor figures in this Arabian epic. I'm not sure I agree with the reviewer who says that Coll "exonerates" the Bin Laden family as "noble" and "ashamed" of Osama. While it doesn't seem that any of his family members were involved in his terroristic activities (and many probably are genuinely repelled by them), there does seem to be a thread of ambivalence running through the family and Saudi society in general. Toward the end, Coll quotes a certain Saudi prince who says, "while I don't condone Osama's actions, at the end of the day, the Americans deserved it." All in all, a fascinating study of the Bin laden dynasty.

Around 5 years after 9/11, I started to become interested in the factors that led to that infamous day, easily the defining world event of my life and a turning point in the escalating clash between Eastern and Western Civilization. In the first few years after the attack, researchers focused on two key questions: how had the CIA failed to thwart the attack and what chain of events led to the rise of Bin Laden and Al Qaida. Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies and Robert Baur's See No Evil (the inspiration for the film Syriana) provided excellent recounts of oversights within the CIA, the carelessness of the Bush Administration, and the failure of government agencies to work together to identify threats. Other prominent works include Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower, which did an excellent job charting the rise of the Al Qaida, and Steve Coll's Ghost Wars, a must read examination into how the Afghanistan War created a culture of resistance in the Arab world, leading to the Jihad on America. Both The Looming Tower and Ghost Wars won Pulitzer Prizes, and thankfully, Steve Coll has continued to examine 9/11 with his new book, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century.

In studying Osama Bin Laden's rise and excommunication from the wealthy Bin Laden family, The Bin Ladens moves past Osama in taking a close look at those in the family who curried the favour of Saudi Arabia's royal family to earn numerous construction contacts. The Saudi Royal Family spent billions of dollars in the 20th century on palaces and mosques, using its fortuitous oil reserves to spend lavishly on themselves, giving little thought to generating an economy. The rise of the Bin Ladens, led by Mahammed Bin Laden, is a fascinating story, expertly described by Coll, who focuses on the family's entrepreneurial drive in a book that has closer parallels to Richard Branson's autobiography, Losing My Virginity, than to other books centered on the events of 9/11. First Mahammed, then his oldest son Salem, Osama's half-brother, are described for the leadership roles they took in creating one of the most successful corporations in the Saudi Kingdom. In fact, the family's passion for flying would have helped them get along well with Branson, whose wild ways mirrored those of Salem Bin Laden, a businessman who did not like to involve himself in religion or politics, and lived a life that was more suited to a Hollywood movie star than a prominant figure in one of the most religious societies in the world. Compared to his father Mahammed, who fathered more that 50 children, and his half-brother Salem, Osama's pious and narrow minded views, and contradictory rhetoric, make him a fairly uninteresting figure.

Osama's actions hang over Coll's story from start to finish. As he describes the personalities and accomplishments of the Bin Laden children, including a Harvard PHD and a multitude of accomplished businessmen and engineers, Osama's betrayal makes tragic figures of the extended Bin Laden family. Coll examines numerous legal documents and conducts an extensive series of interviews which seem to exonerate the Bin Laden family from any wrong doing associated with Bin Laden's war, and he paints a picture of a proud family, ashamed by Osama's action, which makes them more noble than the droves of individuals in the Arab world who consider Osama to be a hero. Coll does the Bin Laden family a great service with this recount of their rise to prominence, and except for his occasional attacks on Osama's hypocritical actions and unfounded religious doctines (much deserved), he maintains an unbiased view throughout the book. In describing the rise of the Bin Ladens, the concomitant rise of the Al-Saud family is nicely outlined as well, providing insight into the birth of Saudi Arabia and the work of the Saudi Royal family in making Mecca, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammed, and Medina, the place of his exile, the glamorous centers of the Muslim world, possibly the only good use of their oil wealth to date.

Steve Coll is one of the foremost experts on Osama Bin Laden's world, and his works give us important details on Osama's rise, his psychological state-of-mind, and his leadership role in Al Qaida. His books are riveting, I read this recent 600 page epic in 4 days, unable to stop sometimes late into the night. Hopefully, someday soon, Osama will be found, and I sincerity hope Coll will tell that story too.