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Summary
Summary
Saudi Arabia is a country defined by paradox: it sits atop some of the richest oil deposits in the world, and yet the country's roiling disaffection produced sixteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. It is a modern state, driven by contemporary technology, and yet its powerful religious establishment would have its customs and practices rolled back to match those of the Prophet Muhammed over a thousand years ago. In a world where events in the Middle East continue to have geopolitical consequences far beyond the region's boundaries, an understanding of this complex nation is essential.
With Inside the Kingdom , British journalist and bestselling author Robert Lacey has given us one of the most penetrating and insightful looks at Saudi Arabia ever produced. More than twenty years after he first moved to the country to write about the Saudis at the end of the oil boom, Lacey has returned to find out how the consequences of the boom produced a society at war with itself.
Filled with stories told by a broad range of Saudis, from high princes and ambassadors to men and women on the street , Inside the Kingdom is in many ways the story of the Saudis in their own words. It is a story of oil money that opened the door to Western ways, and produced a conservative backlash with effects that are still being felt today. It is a story of kings and princes who worried more about keeping power than the dangerous consequences of empowering radical clerics. It is a story of men who challenged orthodoxy and risked prison or death in the name of furthering open society, and of women who defied laws saying they should not write, drive, or play sports. And, at its heart, it is a story of a people attempting to reconcile the religious separatism of the past and the rapidly changing world with which they are increasingly intertwined. Their success - or failure - will have powerful reverberations in their own country, and across the globe.
Author Notes
Robert Lacey was born in Guilford, Surrey, England on January 3, 1944. He earned a B.A. in 1967, a diploma of education in 1967, and an M.A. in 1970, all from Selwyn College, Cambridge.
Lacey began his writing career as a journalist, working for the Illustrated London News and later the Sunday Times magazine. While working for the latter, he also began writing biographies; his books about Robert, Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh led to a commission to write a history of Queen Elizabeth's reign, to be published during her silver jubilee. Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor became an international bestseller, and established Lacey's reputation as a biographer who treated his subjects accurately and fairly.
Lacey is a thorough researcher who has often gone to great lengths to immerse himself in the background of the people he writes about. He moved to the Middle East and even learned Arabic while doing research for The Kingdom, a biography of Saudi Arabia's first ruler, Abdul Aziz Sa'ud. And when writing Ford: The Man and the Machine, about Henry Ford, he relocated to Michigan and worked for a time on the assembly line in an auto plant. He is also the author of Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life, The Queen of the North Atlantic, The Life and Times of Henry the VIII, God Bless Her!, and Princess, a pictorial biography of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Robert Lacey married Alexandre Avrach, a graphic designer, in 1971. They have three children, Sasha, Scarlett, and Bruno.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Lacey (The Kingdom) delves into the paradoxes in Saudi society-where women are forbidden to drive but are more likely to attend universities than men-and why this nation yielded most of the terrorist team on September 11, Osama bin Laden and one of the largest group of foreign fighters sent to Guantùnamo from Afghanistan. Lacey's conversational tone and anecdotal approach to storytelling and analysis gives us a vivid portrait of personal and political life in Saudi Arabia's public and personal spheres, the traditions that govern everyday life, the country's journey from relative liberalism on the tide of extreme oil wealth in the 1980s to a resurgence of traditionalism. Lacey shows us a land where the governing dynasty gives rehabilitated Guantùnamo returnees an $18,000 stipend toward their marriage dowry, and 15 young girls died in a schoolhouse fire in 2002 because they were not properly veiled, and religious police forbade them to escape and prevented firefighters from entering the burning building. Lacey's eye for sweeping trends and the telling detail combined with the depth, breadth and evenhandedness of his research makes for an indispensable guide. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Lacey, an author of popular works of British history, recently lived in Saudi Arabia, yielding this view of that country's internal politics. Launching his narrative from 1979, the year when Islamic fanatics shocked the Saudi royal family with a bloody invasion of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Lacey expresses his purpose as divining what in Saudi Arabian society nurtures religious extremism. Despite this serious intent, Lacey writes buoyantly, his prose expressing interest in people whose life stories he gathers and integrates into his overall theme. Introducing a young man fired by religion to burn down a video store, a bin Laden recruit retired from his jihadi career, and a woman who imparts her experience of Saudi male attitudes toward women, Lacey exemplifies their cases as political factors, among others such as tribes and the Wahhabi clerical establishment, that the House of Saud balances to maintain its rule. The dynasty's complex internal power lines and the personalities of its three most recent kings (Khaled, Fahd, and presently Abdullah) inform Lacey's perceptive account of a society pulled between modernity and Islamic Fundamentalism.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2009 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Lacey's (Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II) second study of Saudi Arabia acts as an antecedent to his portrait of the Saudi dynasty in The Kingdom. Here, he examines the tension between conservative religious players and the secular pressures from abroad and within the country over the past 25 years. Through extensive interviews and a broad reading of more specialized works, Lacey brings together colorful anecdotes, vivid narrative, and character sketches to create a lively picture of Saudi society, its authoritarian and benevolent monarchy, and its complex international role. Verdict Lacey skillfully interweaves major political issues and social practices that will interest and inform general readers.-Elizabeth R. Hayford, Associated Coll. of the Midwest, Evanston, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.