Steve Coll's book tells two stories: a big one about how the bin Laden family cashed in on the oil bonanza in Saudi Arabia, and a smaller one about Osama's role in the family business before he turned to holy warfare. Although well written, lucid and packed with useful detail, The Bin Ladens doesn't establish much of a connection between the family firm in Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden's jihad in Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan and America, except that oil wealth funded both. The bin Laden group isn't among the world's largest engineering businesses, although readers might finish this book believing that it is: Coll calls it Saudi Arabia's Halliburton, even though the latter is an oil services firm, not a construction company. He is at his best excavating details from the mountain of documents generated by various bin Laden brothers in the lawsuits and divorce settlements that have followed on several decades of deals gone sour.

LRB 4 December 2008 | PDF Download