Amazon.co.uk Review
Shortly after terrorists led by Osama bin Laden attacked the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered retaliatory missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. It was the first time the United States had responded to an individual terrorist with such overwhelming military force. Bin Laden, of course, is no run-of-the-mill rabble-rouser; Clinton called him "perhaps the pre- eminent organiser and financier of international terrorism in the world today." That's quite a label for someone who, as biographer Yossef Bodansky describes, "lives with his four wives and some fifteen children in a small cave in eastern Afghanistan" without running water. Yet he is "a principal player in a tangled and sinister web of terrorism-sponsoring states, intelligence chieftains and master terrorists." Remarkably little is known about the man; as Bodansky reveals, even the year of bin Laden's birth is uncertain. This book, then, is more than the story of a single terrorist. It's a description of a whole movement waging a jihad--holy war- -against the United States in the belief that America's modernising influence on Arab nations thwarts Islamic fundamentalist goals.
Bin Laden is strikingly current, extremely well-informed, and thoroughly detailed. Readers interested in facts about the Middle East's violent underworld will find it fascinating--and chilling. Bodansky notes that Bin Laden has become a hero to radical Muslim youth, and "Osama" is now a very popular baby name in many Arab countries.
--John J. Miller
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Synopsis
A portion of the proceeds on the sale of this book will be donated to the Red Cross to aid in humanitarian relief efforts around the world. Who is Osama bin Laden- the only terrorist leader ever to have declared a holy war against America? What drives him and those he leads to hate a West that helped enrich and arm them? Bin Laden's name has been linked to a number of incidents that have cost Americans their lives, including the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and the destruction of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Now, he is linked to the recent catastrophic assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Here is a comprehensive account of the rise of bin Laden. In meticulous detail, world-renowned terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky uncovers the events in bin Laden's life that turned the once-promising engineering student into a cold-blooded leader of radical islam. In the process, Bodansky reveals a chilling story that is as current as today's headlines but as ancient as the Crusades-a story that transcends bin Laden and any other single man. This book is a sobering wake-up call.
