Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia - Softcover

Lacey, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143118277 ISBN 13: 9780143118275

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2010

Synopsis

"It's all here-Islam, the family tree, a sea of oil and money to match, palace intrigue...This is high drama and an epic tale."
-Tom Brokaw

Though Saudi Arabia sits on one of the richest oil deposits in the world, it also produced fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. In this immensely important book, journalist Robert Lacey draws on years of access to every circle of Saudi society giving readers the fullest portrait yet of a land straddling the worlds of medievalism and modernity. Moving from the bloody seizure of Mecca's Grand Mosque in 1979, through the Persian Gulf War, to the delicate U.S.-Saudi relations in a post 9/11 world, Inside the Kingdom brings recent history to vivid life and offers a powerful story of a country learning how not to be at war with itself.

About this title

Review:

"Beautifully written and thought-provoking ... Robert Lacey has written a highly accomplished book which should go into the bags of anyone who has to travel to the kingdom" (Literary Review)

"Compelling ... [I] know of no book that captures so convincingly the intimate connection between the kingdom and the rise of al-Qaeda and its jihadist ideology...What distinguishes Mr Lacey's account is his use of Saudi voices - many of them, even in this most reticent of cultures, on the record - to anatomise a deeply rooted culture of intolerance" (Economist)

"Incisive ... The real triumph of this book ... is the way it peels away the layers of mystery that shroud a civil society of which we have almost no knowledge" (Sunday Times)

Book Description:

The complex story of what's been happening within Saudi Arabia - while the West wasn't looking

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0143118277
• ISBN 13: 9780143118275
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448