The Bin Ladens The Story of a Family and Its Fortune |
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Author:
| Coll, Steve |
ISBN: | 978-1-84614-124-9 |
Publication Date: | Apr 2008 |
Publisher: | Penguin Books, Limited
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Imprint: | Allen Lane |
Book Format: | Hardback |
List Price: | AUD $69.95 |
Book Description:
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The rise and rise of the Bin Laden family is one of the great stories of the twentieth century- the repercussions of that rise have, of course, already deeply marked the twenty-first. And yet it is a story that has never been properly told. Their affairs shrouded in secrecy, living in one of the most powerful, closed, unaccountable countries on earth, the Bin Laden have - until now - successfully fended off all attempts to understand the wourld from which Osama sprang.
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More DescriptionThe rise and rise of the Bin Laden family is one of the great stories of the twentieth century- the repercussions of that rise have, of course, already deeply marked the twenty-first. And yet it is a story that has never been properly told. Their affairs shrouded in secrecy, living in one of the most powerful, closed, unaccountable countries on earth, the Bin Laden have - until now - successfully fended off all attempts to understand the wourld from which Osama sprang.
Steve Coll's THE BIN LADENS is the history of a family and its fortune- of how a young illiterate Yemeni bricklayer, Mohammed Bin Laden, 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 his many children into millionaires. It is the story of the Saudi royal family, who the Bin Ladens served so loyally, and without whose capricious favour they would have been nothing. And it is the story of the revolutions in a country founded on extreme religious purity becoming awash with oil momey and dazzled by the temptations of the West. In only two generations the Bin Laden moved from a desert canyon to luxury jets, yachts and private compounds around the world, even financing Hollywood movies. These religious and cultural extremes resulted in everything from enthusiasm for the West - exemplified by Osama's free-living pilot brother Salem - to an overwhelming determination to destroy it.
THE BINB LADENS- meticulously researched, brilliantly written - is one of the major works to be provoked by the current crisis. Colourful, shocking, entertaining and disturbing, it dramatizes all the strange contradictions of globalization in the story of a single family who have used money, mobility and technology to frighteningly varied ends.