The Bin Ladens

March 31, 2008
The bin Ladens are famous for spawning the world’s foremost terrorist and building one of the Middle East’s foremost corporate dynasties. Pulitzer Prize–winner 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.

Starred review from May 1, 2008
This is one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date books in English to tell the rags-to-riches story of the Arabian Peninsula's house of Bin Laden. In a fascinating read, Coll (former managing editor, the "Washington Post"), who won the Pulitzer Prize for "Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001", provides a detailed account of the Bin Ladens and their myriad business enterprises. Coll traces the history of Mohammed Bin Laden, a young illiterate Yemeni bricklayer who went to the newly established country of Saudi Arabia and became a key figure in building the country's infrastructural projects, including roads and mosques. In the process, the scion of the Bin Laden family became a multimillionaire and transformed his entrepreneurial skills into establishing numerous business ventures that tied him to the world's rich and famous. The Bin Laden family's symbiotic relationship with the Saudi royal family served as a critical factor in bolstering the Bin Laden fortunes and shielding the family from its adversaries. The author's portrayal of the Bin Ladens is greatly readable while also sophisticated in its complexities. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 1/08.]Nader Entessar, Univ. of South Alabama, Mobile

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2008
The 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)