![Steve Coll - The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century [Audio book]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/42/48/00124842_medium.jpeg)
Steve Coll - The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century [Audio book]
![Steve Coll - The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century [Audio book]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/42/48/00124842.jpeg)
Steve Coll - The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
Publisher: Penguin Audio | ISBN: 0143143239 | Publish Year: 2008 | MP3 @ 96Kbps | 446 MB
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.