A good start on a very complex subject
The pieces of the Bin Laden family puzzle have been scattered across numerous continents and decades. With a doggedness that has already won him two Pulitzers, Steve Coll attacks the challenge of bringing these pieces together to form the definitive history of this enigmatic family. From published works to countless interviews with Bin Laden family and associates to long sequestered State Department documents, Coll assiduously mines the data and develops a portrait of one of the most recognizable names in the world. This portrait is immediately recognizable to everyone: money, political power, excess, self-destruction, contradiction, hypocrisy. The lives of the fifty-four children of Mohamed Bin Laden would not be out of place in the pages of the National Enquirer, People, or Forbes. One gets a sense of humanity from this all-powerful Saudi Arabian family. Unfortunately, even with all of this research, Coll's portrait still contains holes, and is far from being the definitive word on the Bin Ladens.

While the collected evidence does flesh out many previously unknown details, it remains thin in those areas that will be of most interest to scholars and casual observers alike. Stories about the Bin Laden's love of flying and ownership of property or the latest gadgets are entertaining, but most readers are going to come to the book expecting a clear understanding of how the most famous Bin Laden fits into the dynamic. Granted, being the relative of the mastermind of the worst terrorist attack in history is bound to shut up even the most chatty individual. Throw in the added dimension of the potential loss of a family fortune through lawsuits related to said person, and the prospects for obtaining any real data becomes thin. Coll acknowledges this throughout The Bin Ladens, but it doesn't lessen the impact. By the end, the reader is left with just as many questions as when they started.

Publicly, the Bin Laden family repudiated and disowned Osama in the early 1990s when he was primarily making trouble in Saudi Arabia. This repudiation only intensified as Osama's terrorist actions increased. Privately, however, the picture is murky. Coll tantalizes with snippets and anecdotes that certain elements of the family may have supported Osama, either tacitly or directly via financial means, but they ultimately end up going nowhere. For instance, near the end of the narrative, he throws out the comment from one of Osama's nieces that "some of the young people at the Bin Laden compound [in Jeddah] openly celebrated the September 11 attacks," but fails to add anything more. Peppered throughout the book are countless examples such as this where the author ultimately has to state that "the record is uncertain" or "the evidence just isn't there."

Even more puzzling is the role that the governments of Saudi Arabia and even the United States played in supporting the Bin Laden family over the years. Why did Saudi Arabia issue diplomatic passports to non-governmental charities suspected of funneling cash to Al Qaeda? Did the FBI treat the issue of terrorist financing so gently because the CIA wrongly estimated its importance as being low, or was there political pressure from on high? What about Bush family friend, Jim Bath's, wild assertion that he ran supplies to Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan for the CIA during a time that the CIA has repeatedly claimed it did not have any contact with Osama? In the end, such unanswered questions leave the book feeling sparse and unfinished.

All in all, though, one does get the impression that many of the deficiencies were caused by stonewalling from those who hold the puzzle pieces as opposed to any deficiencies on Coll's part. This being the first real, in-depth look at such a broad subject as this huge, secretive Saudi Arabian family, The Bin Ladens is an excellent starting point. Researchers will no doubt return to it and use it as the foundation for future treatises on Osama and the larger topic of the Global War on Terror. For that, it most certainly must be praised.

What a journey!
Yes, this is a long book; worth every minute. The depth of research is mind-boggling, but it is written with a clear, quickly-moving presentation. It is long on detail, extensive and interesting, short on editorializing: Coll leaves that up to the reader. Given the opacity of the Saud and bin Laden families' entrepreneurship, one is certainly left wondering! My favourite line actually appears at the very end: "...in the meanwhile, each time his audio- or videotapes reached Al-Jazeera or CNN, Osama reemphasized, like a Barbary pirate with a marketing degree, the impunity that he still enjoyed, as well as his continuing capacity to plan and inspire mass violence by exploiting the channels and the ethos of global integration." Another Pulitzer for Coll?

Excellent work
What an insight Mr. Coll gives to the Bin Laden family...I highly recommend this book!

An eye opening account of this family and the last century of Saudi history
Picked up this book after hearing the author interviewed on PBS. Given the family's aversion to publicity this represents an exhaustive effort to pry out detail. Coll tracks the family history from their humble beginnings in Yemen to the patriarch's rise in business association with the Saudi royal family, and to the present day. Usually after finishing a book this size I am ready to switch to something els, but at the end of this 575-page volume I found myself going back to reread the first few chapters. This held my interest and is worth the time.

Nothing much to add
Peterson's review is very good and captures the essence of the book. There is a good deal of information about the Saudi Monarchy in this book that can fill out reading from other sources. It's a poignant story at times evoking the normal tragedies of life in the early deaths of Mohamed, the founder of the dynasty and his heir, Salem. Mr. Coll has a gift for narrative non-ficiton and weaves the constant theme of aviation into the Bin Laden story as well as the destructive side of their construction business. It is a fascinating study of the Bin Ladin family and of Saudi Arabia as it grew into the twentieth century. As he did with Ghost Wars, Mr. Coll has produced another great book.

I will plug Frontier of Faith here for a further study of where the battle formed and rages between Islam's radical arm and the West.