Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis [Hardcover]

John R. Bradley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 19, 2005

Saudi Arabia: land of oil, terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, and a crucial American ally. As the only Western journalist to have extensively worked in the Saudi Kingdom, John R. Bradley is uniquely able to expose the turmoil that is shaking the House of Saud to its foundations. From the heart of the secretive Islamic kingdom's urban centers to its most remote mountainous terrain, from the homes of royalty to the slums of its poorest inhabitants, he provides intimate details and reveals underlying regional, religious, and tribal rivalries. Bradley highlights tensions generated by social change, focuses on the educational system, the increasing restlessness of Saudi youth faced with limited opportunities for cultural and political expression, and the predicament of Saudi women seeking opportunities but facing constraints. What are the implications for the Sauds and the West? This book offers a startling look at the present predicament and a troubling view of the future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An Arabic-speaking Westerner who seized a rare opportunity to travel freely throughout Saudi Arabia, Bradley offers a dense, abstract study that reads more like the "culture and history" section of a guidebook than a juicy, insider account. But Bradley did get access to high-profile Saudis, most memorably to Osama bin Laden's nephew, with whom Bradley went on a picnic. An accomplished journalist and scholar who prefers facts to sensory-let alone salacious-details, Bradley successfully compiles research, information, geographical data and flat-footed descriptions of observed events to explain the political dynamics and historical roots of a strong authoritarian state, characterized particularly by the close relation between the Al-Saud ruling family and the conservative Wahhabis. He conveys a sense of a country fraught with fear, hostility and suspicion while remaining aloof from much of the drama he describes. Bradley is at his best when he writes about the press, providing what is truly an insider's look and untangling some of the knotted ties between the media, the Saudi government and the United States.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Bradley arrived in Saudi Arabia to work as a journalist from 2001 to 2003 for the -English-language Arab News just as a ban on internal travel by Western journalists was lifted. Recounting visits to Saudi Arabia's regions, Bradley underscores the quasi-imperial composition of the regime: rule by the centrally situated al-Saud clan, and acquiescence to varying degrees by the tribal south, the Shiite east, and the historically commercial Hijaz along the Red Sea. The al-Saud alliance with the Wahhabi clergy completes Bradley's picture frame of the regime, although the picture itself is provided in details from the day-to-day lives of ordinary Saudis whom the author meets. The image posits the modern alongside the medieval, and the attractively hospitable against the repellently barbaric, though Bradley remains curious and engaged throughout. The geopolitics of oil is beyond the author's scope, but for readers interested in the social forces at work in the country, including terrorism, Bradley provides perceptive access to current trends. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (May 19, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403964335
• ISBN-13: 978-1403964335
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #576,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > History > Middle East > Saudi Arabia

More About the Author

John R. Bradley (johnrbradley.wordpress.com) was born in England in 1970. He was educated at University College London, Dartmouth College in the United States, and Exeter College, Oxford.

Between 1998 and 2010, Bradley was based in the Middle East. Fluent in Arabic, he is the author of four books on the region that draw heavily on his personal experience: Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), a Foreign Affairs bestseller; the critically acclaimed Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; reprinted in January 2011 in an updated edition with the subtitle The Road to Revolution in the Land of the Pharaohs), which uniquely and accurately predicted the Jan. 25 Cairo uprising; Behind the Veil of Vice: The Business and Culture of Sex in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); and After the Arab Spring: How the Islamists Hijacked the Middle East Revolt (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Bradley's essays, dispatches, reviews, and op-eds have appeared in many publications, including: The Washington Quarterly, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, Salon, The London Telegraph, The London Daily Mail, The Forward, The London Evening Standard, The Jewish Chronicle, The Spectator, The New York Post, The London Sunday Times, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Independent, The Washington Times, Newsweek, Asia Times Online, Prospect, and The Economist.

He has been interviewed about the Middle East by CNN, the BBC, PBS, NPR, CBS, Fox News, Al-Jazeera English, Sky News, Channel 4 News, Bloomberg TV, and many other media outlets. And he has participated in public debates at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Intelligence Squared in London, and The Pacific Council for International Affairs in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional, June 14, 2005

By 

Linda Carlyle ((USA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (Hardcover)

I bought this from amazon after I saw Bradley on Fox & Friends on Sunday 12 June. He was the most articulate speaker on Saudi Arabia I have seen on the networks. Crucially, he lived there for 2.5 years and speaks Arabic. He is also unusual in that his book combines very literary prose (he has edited and published critically acclaimed books on the great Anglo-American author Henry James) with political journalism and travel narrative. The result, Saudi Arabia Exposed, is far from the usual boring academic book you have to struggle through to get useful information. If you are a layperson who wants to know what makes the Saudis tick, what makes them seem to be our allies and our enemies at the same time, this is the book to buy.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on Saudi Arabia, May 29, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (Hardcover)

This is according to most reports the best book on Saudi Arabia that has yet been written. It does not content itself with looking at the royal family, but attempts to take a look at the Saudi people in all their complexity. Surprisingly what Bradley finds is not the stereotypical picture had in the West of a wholly submissive and subservient people who are pleased to be ruled by the House of Saud. In fact what Bradley finds is a people eager for a degree of freedom and autonomy, one which is oppressed by the royal family 's corruption .
In an interview on FrontPage Com. in which he spoke about the book and the situation in Saudi Arabia Bradley said that what is needed now is a real effort to help democratic elements in Saudi Arabia come to the fore. He criticized the Bush Administration for caring only for oil supplies and short- term convenience, thus appeasing the Saudi ruling house, and not really being true to the Democratization of the Middle East program it itself has espoused.
As Bradley a veteran Arabic speaking journalist who traveled throughout the kingdom in his research on this book, sees it the Saudi people suffer from a regime corrupt as the former Soviet one, a regime in which privilege and power are held by one huge clan suppressing millions of people.
This work thus provides both a very detailed picture of the way people actually live in Saudi Arabia, and political prescriptions as to how to alleviate the situation of a disenfranchised and tyrannized majority.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the money for just the chapter on Asir, July 4, 2005

By 

J D Baldwin (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (Hardcover)

This book by veteran Middle East journalist John R Bradley is worth the money for just the chapter on the Asir region and the ideological/regional/religious background of the Saudi hijackers on 9/11. Also excellent are the insights into the bizzare Bin Laden-Bush-Al-Saud entanglement, the hypocrisy and duplicity inside the state-controled media, and the exploration of how Saudi Arabia is an empire in the same way the Soviet Union was -- inhabited by people who are historically not Wahhabis and in fact remain (in the author's view) in many ways resistant to Wahhabism. Bradley doesn't appear to recognize the fact, but with its clear distinction between the tyrannical regime and the oppressed people, there is a strong message in theis book about how the Saudis might be natural allies of the West if it chose to overthrow the Al-Saud regime... Very highly recommended!