The Bin Ladens

The Bin Ladens PDF Author: Steve Coll
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101202726
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
The rise and rise of the Bin Laden family is one of the great stories of the twentieth century; its repercussions have already deeply marked the twenty-first. Until now, however, it is a story that has never been fully told, as the Bin Ladens have successfully fended off attempts to understand the family circles from which Osama sprang. In this the family has been abetted by the kingdom it calls home, Saudi Arabia, one of the most closed societies on earth. Steve Coll’s The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century is the groundbreaking history of a family and its fortune. It chronicles a young illiterate Yemeni bricklayer, Mohamed Bin Laden, who 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 many of his children millionaires. It is also a story of the Saudi royal family, whom the Bin Ladens served loyally and without whose capricious favor they would have been nothing. And it is a story of tensions and contradictions in a country founded on extreme religious purity, which then became awash in oil money and dazzled by the temptations of the West. In only two generations the Bin Ladens moved from a famine-stricken desert canyon to luxury jets, yachts, and private compounds around the world, even going into business with Hollywood celebrities. These religious and cultural gyrations resulted in everything from enthusiasm for America—exemplified by Osama’s free-living pilot brother Salem—to an overwhelming determination to destroy it. The Bin Ladens is a meticulously researched, colorful, shocking, entertaining, and disturbing narrative of global integration and its limitations. It encapsulates the unsettling contradictions of globalization in the story of a single family who has used money, mobility, and technology to dramatically varied ends.

The Bin Ladens

The Bin Ladens PDF Author: Steve Coll
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101202726
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 688

Get Book Here

Book Description
The rise and rise of the Bin Laden family is one of the great stories of the twentieth century; its repercussions have already deeply marked the twenty-first. Until now, however, it is a story that has never been fully told, as the Bin Ladens have successfully fended off attempts to understand the family circles from which Osama sprang. In this the family has been abetted by the kingdom it calls home, Saudi Arabia, one of the most closed societies on earth. Steve Coll’s The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century is the groundbreaking history of a family and its fortune. It chronicles a young illiterate Yemeni bricklayer, Mohamed Bin Laden, who 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 many of his children millionaires. It is also a story of the Saudi royal family, whom the Bin Ladens served loyally and without whose capricious favor they would have been nothing. And it is a story of tensions and contradictions in a country founded on extreme religious purity, which then became awash in oil money and dazzled by the temptations of the West. In only two generations the Bin Ladens moved from a famine-stricken desert canyon to luxury jets, yachts, and private compounds around the world, even going into business with Hollywood celebrities. These religious and cultural gyrations resulted in everything from enthusiasm for America—exemplified by Osama’s free-living pilot brother Salem—to an overwhelming determination to destroy it. The Bin Ladens is a meticulously researched, colorful, shocking, entertaining, and disturbing narrative of global integration and its limitations. It encapsulates the unsettling contradictions of globalization in the story of a single family who has used money, mobility, and technology to dramatically varied ends.

The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden

The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden PDF Author: Peter L. Bergen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982170530
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
The world’s leading expert on Osama bin Laden delivers for the first time the “riveting” (The New York Times) definitive biography of a man who set the course of American foreign policy for the 21st century and whose ideological heirs we continue to battle today. In The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, Peter Bergan provides the first reevaluation of the man responsible for precipitating America’s long war with al-Qaeda and its decedents, capturing bin Laden in all the dimensions of his life: as a family man, as a zealot, as a battlefield commander, as a terrorist leader, and as a fugitive. The book sheds light on his many contradictions: he was the son of a billionaire yet insisted his family live like paupers. He adored his wives and children, depending on his two wives, both of whom had PhDs, to make critical strategic decisions. Yet, he also brought ruin to his family. He was fanatically religious but willing to kill thousands of civilians in the name of Islam. He inspired deep loyalty, yet, in the end, his bodyguards turned against him. And while he inflicted the most lethal act of mass murder in United States history, he failed to achieve any of his strategic goals. In his final years, the lasting image we have of bin Laden is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself, just as another dad flipping through the channels with his remote. In the end, bin Laden died in a squalid suburban compound, far from the front lines of his holy war. And yet, despite that unheroic denouement, his ideology lives on. Thanks to exclusive interviews with family members and associates, and documents unearthed only recently, Bergen’s “comprehensive, authoritative, and compelling” (H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World) portrait of Osama bin Laden reveals for the first time who he really was and why he continues to inspire a new generation of jihadists.

No Easy Day

No Easy Day PDF Author: Mark Owen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525953728
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Mark Owen is a pseudonym for Matt Bissonnette.

Messages to the World

Messages to the World PDF Author: Osama bin Laden
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789603064
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Despite the saturation of global media coverage, Osama bin Laden's own writings have been curiously absent from analysis of the "war on terror." Over the last ten years, bin Laden has issued a series of carefully tailored public statements, from interviews with Western and Arabic journalists to faxes and video recordings. These texts supply evidence crucial to an understanding of the bizarre mix of Quranic scholarship, CIA training, punctual interventions in Gulf politics and messianic anti-imperialism that has formed the programmatic core of Al Qaeda. In bringing together the various statements issued under bin Laden's name since 1994, this volume forms part of a growing discourse that seeks to demythologize the terrorist network. Newly translated from the Arabic, annotated with a critical introduction by Islamic scholar Bruce Lawrence, this collection places the statements in their religious, historical and political context. It shows how bin Laden's views draw on and differ from other strands of radical Islamic thought; it also demonstrates how his arguments vary in degrees of consistency, and how his evasions concerning the true nature and extent of his own group, and over his own role in terrorist attacks, have contributed to the perpetuation of his personal mythology.

Manhunt

Manhunt PDF Author: Peter L. Bergen
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
ISBN: 0385676786
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
From the author of the New York Times bestselling Holy War, Inc., this is the definitive account of the decade-long manhunt for the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda expert and CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen paints a multidimensional picture of the hunt for Osama bin Laden over the past decade, including the operation that killed him. Other key elements of the book will include: - A careful account of Obama's decision-making process as the raid was planned - The fascinating story of a group of women CIA analysts who never gave up assembling the tiniest clues about bin Laden's whereabouts - The untold and action-packed history of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and the SEALs - An analysis of what the death of bin Laden means for Al Qaeda and for Obama's legacy Just as Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Last Days of Hitler was the definitive account of the death of the Nazi dictator, Manhunt is the authoritative, immersive account of the death of the man who organized the largest mass murder in American history.

The Killing of Osama Bin Laden

The Killing of Osama Bin Laden PDF Author: Seymour M Hersh
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784784389
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 115

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Book Description
Electrifying investigation of White House lies about the assassination of Osama bin Laden In 2011, an elite group of US Navy SEALS stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, the man the United States had begun chasing before the devastating attacks of 9/11. The news did much to boost President Obama’s first term and played a major part in his reelection victory of the following year. But much of the story of that night, as presented to the world, was incomplete, or a lie. The evidence of what actually went on remains hidden. At the same time, the full story of the United States’ involvement in the Syrian civil war has been kept behind a diplomatic curtain, concealed by doublespeak. It is a policy of obfuscation that has compelled the White House to turn a blind eye to Turkey’s involvement in supporting ISIS and its predecessors in Syria. This investigation, which began as a series of essays in the London Review of Books, has ignited a firestorm of controversy in the world media. In his introduction, Hersh asks what will be the legacy of Obama’s time in office. Was it an era of “change we can believe in” or a season of lies and compromises that continued George W. Bush’s misconceived War on Terror? How did he lose the confidence of the general in charge of America’s forces who acted in direct contradiction to the White House? What else do we not know?.

bin Laden

bin Laden PDF Author: Yossef Bodansky
Publisher: Prima Lifestyles
ISBN: 0307797724
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
"Fascinating account. I strongly recommend it." —Jeane J. Kirkpatrick World-renowned terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky explores the transformation of Osama bin Laden from a once promising engineering student into the cold-blooded leader of the radical Islamic terrorist group, al Qaeda. With meticulous detail, Bodansky chronicles the events leading up to the international operation of hunting bin Laden. In the process, Bodansky pulls together a chilling story that is as ancient as the Crusades; a story that transcends bin Laden and any other single man, one that sweeps from Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq to Kosovo and beyond. He takes you deep into the heart of centuries-old hatreds that have produced generations of bin Ladens and a terror network of underground armies that can strike virtually anywhere in the world. Fueled by Middle Eastern oil wealth and covertly armed by some of America's closest allies, this terror network is waging a brutal guerrilla war whose aim is nothing short of changing the course of history. The battlefields are increasingly Western city streets, and the casualties are most often innocents caught in the crossfire. Including information about al Qaeda’s pursuit of chemical and nuclear weapons, covert deals between the U.S. and Islamic terrorists, and American efforts in the years-long campaign to capture Osama bin Laden, this book is a sobering wake-up call.

The Finish

The Finish PDF Author: Mark Bowden
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802194109
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
New York Times bestseller: The true behind-the-scenes story of the manhunt for the 9/11 mastermind is “a page-turner” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). From the author of Black Hawk Down and Hue 1968, this is a gripping account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. With access to key sources, Mark Bowden takes us inside the rooms where decisions were made and on the ground where the action unfolded. After masterminding the attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden managed to vanish. Over the next ten years, as Bowden shows, America found that its war with al Qaeda—a scattered group of individuals who were almost impossible to track—demanded an innovative approach. Step by step, Bowden describes the development of a new tactical strategy to fight this war—the fusion of intel from various agencies and on-the-ground special ops. After thousands of special forces missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the right weapon to go after bin Laden had finally evolved. By spring 2011, intelligence pointed to a compound in Abbottabad; it was estimated that there was a 50/50 chance that Osama was there. Bowden shows how three strategies were mooted: a drone strike, a precision bombing, or an assault by Navy SEALs. In the end, the president had to make the final decision. It was time for the finish. “In-depth interviews with Obama and other insiders reveal a White House on edge, facing top-secret options, white-knuckle decisions, and unforeseen obstacles . . . Bowden weaves together accounts from Obama and top decision-makers for the full story behind the daring operation.” —Vanity Fair “The most accessible and satisfying book yet written on the climactic event in the United States’ long war against al Qaeda.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden PDF Author: Elaine Landau
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books
ISBN: 0761388788
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description
Almost exactly ten years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, An elite team of U.S. special forces stunned the world with a dramatic and daring feat. In this fascinating account, learn more about the leader of the al-Qaeda network And The U.S. efforts that finally brought the world's most feared terrorist to justice.

Growing Up Bin Laden

Growing Up Bin Laden PDF Author: Jean Sasson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1780740247
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
As the western world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden has fought to keep his personal life a mystery – loyalty and fear keeping those who know him from speaking out – until now. For the first time, two of Osama’s closest family members, his first wife Najwa and their fourth son Omar, go behind the headlines to reveal the truth about the character and life of a man feared and revered around the globe. In gripping detail, they recount the drama, tensions, and everyday activities of the man they knew as a husband and father. Married at fifteen, Najwa describes the transformation of the quiet, serious young man she fell in love with into an authoritarian husband and stern father, an entrepreneur, and – finally – the leader of a complex international terrorist network. Uprooted from a life of extraordinary luxury and privilege in Saudi Arabia, they suddenly found themselves living life on the run, fleeing from country to country under assumed names and fake passports. Omar describes how he and his siblings were brought up in remote ranches and fortified Afghani mountain camps, handling Kalashnikovs and learning desert survival skills. Their eventual escape from Afghanistan would come just days before the terrible events of 9/11 changed the world forever. With unprecedented access and exclusive family photographs, Jean Sasson, author of the bestselling Princess, presents the story that we were never meant to hear.