The Bin Ladens

How do you keep a nonfiction audio that spans three generations and four continents worth hearing? First, you find a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who knows how to blend story, fact, and politics into readability. Like Steve Coll. Then you find a reader who keeps the narration moving, emphasizes the historical drama, and delivers Saudi names, titles, and places seamlessly. Like Erik Singer. Beginning with the family patriarch, Mohammed, the book traces how his poverty in the southern Yemen desert and menial Saudi jobs ended in engineering feats and a fortune for the 50 children he leaves behind to carry on the bin Laden traditions. Some are in Saudi telecommunications and construction, others in real estate around the world, and one is incubating a cult of martyrdom in Afghanistan. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

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.