The Book World supplement to The Washington Post for tomorrow will carry this review of Steven Coll’s book, The Bin Ladens. It appears to be an interesting books, though one I’m unlikely to review myself. I do question, though, the reviewer’s comment that the ‘US flooded Afghanistan [with weapons], chiefly Stingers’. The number of Stinger missiles provided the mujaheddin was in the low-hundreds, hardly a ‘flood’. If he means that it proved to be a critical weapon, then okay, he has a point; perhaps it’s just sloppy writing for the review. For those interested in Bin Laden, Osama, his father, and siblings, they might want to take a look at the book.

THE BIN LADENS
How Osama bin Laden’s family grew rich, powerful and divided
Reviewed by Milton Viorst

Change the names and locations, and Steve Coll’s marvelous book about the bin Laden family would begin like a familiar American saga. An illiterate youth arrives in a land of opportunity from his impoverished homeland and, by dint of ambition, talent and hard work, becomes immensely rich and powerful. He collects properties, airplanes, luxury cars and women — tastes he passes on to his sons. He earns a niche in the pantheon of great builders of his adopted country.

The youth is Mohamed bin Laden, justly venerated in Saudi Arabia. But collective memory plays funny tricks, and in the West he will be permanently remembered as the father of Osama. The bin Ladens, though their Horatio Alger story overlaps Western experience, emerge as unmistakably Middle Eastern — to the point of being torn asunder by today’s religious struggles. Coll, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Washington Post managing editor, leaves the psychology to his readers. He prefers writing on economics and politics, leavening them with anecdotes and gossip; the result is a fascinating panorama of a great family, presented within the context of the 9/11 drama.
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