Steve Coll is most recently the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller
Ghost Wars. He also won a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism. He covered Afghanistan as the
Washington Post's South Asia bureau chief between 1989 and 1992 and was the
Post's managing editor from 1998 to 2004. He is now a staff writer for the
New Yorker. He is the author of five books, including
On the Grand Trunk Road and
The Taking of Getty Oil. He lives with his wife and three children in Maryland.
The Bin Ladens are shrouded in secrecy, living in one of the most closed, unaccountable countries on earth. Little has been known about the world that created Osama - until now.
In this gripping account prizewinning journalist Steve Coll has interviewed those closest to the family who rose from Yemeni peasants to jetsetting millionaires in two generations. In doing so, he reveals a Saudi Arabia torn between religious purity and the temptations of the West, telling a story of oil, money, power, patronage and dangerous cultural extremes.
