Steve Coll

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

Steve Coll

• 2009 Pulitzer–Biography finalist
• 2008 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
• 2008 NBCC–Biography finalist
• Score: 18.59

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the national bestseller Ghost Wars, Steve Coll presents the story of the Bin Laden family’s rise to power and privilege, revealing new information to show how American influences changed the family and how one member’s rebellion changed America.

The Bin Ladens rose from poverty to privilege; they loyally served the Saudi royal family for generations-and then one of their number changed history on September 11, 2001. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll tells the epic story of the rise of the Bin Laden family and of the wildly diverse lifestyles of the generation to which Osama bin Laden belongs, and against whom he rebelled. Starting with the family’s escape from famine at the beginning of the twentieth century through its jet-set era in America after the 1970s oil boom, and finally to the family’s attempts to recover from September 11, The Bin Ladens unearths extensive new material about the family and its relationship with the United States, and provides a richly revealing and emblematic narrative of our globally interconnected…

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden

Steve Coll

• 2005 Pulitzer–Nonfiction winner
• Score: 10.55

Looming large in the minds of the American people since the devastation of September 11, 2001—and perplexing their political analysts, media, and elected leaders—are two unsettling questions: To what extent did America’s best intelligence analysts grasp the rising threat of Islamist radicalism? And, Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail? Steve Coll, managing editor of the Washington Post, provides answers in an exhaustively researched account of U.S. involvement in the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and gave rise to bin Laden’s al Qaeda.

For nearly the past quarter century, while most Americans were unaware, Afghanistan has been the playing field for intense covert operations by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies—invisible wars that sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks and that provide its context. From the Soviet invasion in 1979 through the summer of 2001, the CIA, KGB, Pakistan’s IST, and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Department all operated directly and secretly in Afghanistan. They primed Afghan factions with…