Download or read book Inside the Kingdom written by Robert Lacey and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It's all here-Islam, the family tree, a sea of oil and money to match, palace intrigue...This is high drama and an epic tale." -Tom Brokaw Though Saudi Arabia sits on one of the richest oil deposits in the world, it also produced fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. In this immensely important book, journalist Robert Lacey draws on years of access to every circle of Saudi society giving readers the fullest portrait yet of a land straddling the worlds of medievalism and modernity. Moving from the bloody seizure of Mecca's Grand Mosque in 1979, through the Persian Gulf War, to the delicate U.S.-Saudi relations in a post 9/11 world, Inside the Kingdom brings recent history to vivid life and offers a powerful story of a country learning how not to be at war with itself.

Download or read book The History of Saudi Arabia written by A M Vasilev and published by Saqi. This book was released on 2014-05-22 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How has Saudi Arabia managed to maintain its Arab and Islamic values while at the same time adopting Western technology and a market economy? How have its hereditary leaders, who govern with a mixture of political pragmatism and religious zeal, managed to maintain their power? This comprehensive history of Saudi Arabia from 1745 to the present provides insight into its culture and politics, its powerful oil industry, its relations with its neighbours, and the ongoing influence of the Wahhabi movement. Based on a wealth of Arab, American, British, Western and Eastern European sources, this book will stand as the definitive account of the largest state on the Arabian peninsula.

Download or read book Saudi Arabia in Transition written by Bernard Haykel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-19 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making sense of Saudi Arabia is crucially important today. The kingdom's western province contains the heart of Islam, and it is the United States' closest Arab ally and the largest producer of oil in the world. However, the country is undergoing rapid change: its aged leadership is ceding power to a new generation, and its society, dominated by young people, is restive. Saudi Arabia has long remained closed to foreign scholars, with a select few academics allowed into the kingdom over the past decade. This book presents the fruits of their research as well as those of the most prominent Saudi academics in the field. This volume focuses on different sectors of Saudi society and examines how the changes of the past few decades have affected each. It reflects new insights and provides the most up-to-date research on the country's social, cultural, economic and political dynamics.

Download or read book Succession In Saudi Arabia written by J. Kechichian and published by Springer. This book was released on 2001-08-02 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stability of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains critical to Western security and economic interests. This crucial study focuses on generation change and identifies individuals with greatest leadership potential; examines their political, social, and religious views.

Download or read book On Saudi Arabia written by Karen Elliott House and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With over thirty years of experience writing about Saudi Arabia, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and former publisher of The Wall Street Journal Karen Elliott House has an unprecedented knowledge of life inside this shrouded kingdom. Through anecdotes, observation, analysis, and extensive interviews, she navigates the maze in which Saudi citizens find themselves trapped and reveals the sometimes contradictory nature of the nation that is simultaneously a final bulwark against revolution in the Middle East and a wellspring of Islamic terrorists. Saudi Arabia finds itself threatened by fissures and forces on all sides, and On Saudi Arabia explores in depth what this portends for the country’s future—and our own.

Download or read book Archive Wars written by Rosie Bsheer and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s efforts to construct and disseminate a historical narrative to legitimize its rule. The production of history is premised on the selective erasure of certain pasts and the artifacts that stand witness to them. From the elision of archival documents to the demolition of sacred and secular spaces, each act of destruction is also an act of state building. Following the 1991 Gulf War, political elites in Saudi Arabia pursued these dual projects of historical commemoration and state formation with greater fervor to enforce their postwar vision for state, nation, and economy. Seeing Islamist movements as the leading threat to state power, they sought to de-center religion from educational, cultural, and spatial policies. With this book, Rosie Bsheer explores the increasing secularization of the postwar Saudi state and how it manifested in assembling a national archive and reordering urban space in Riyadh and Mecca. The elites’ project was rife with ironies: in Riyadh, they employed world-renowned experts to fashion an imagined history, while at the same time in Mecca they were overseeing the obliteration of a thousand-year-old topography and its replacement with commercial megaprojects. Archive Wars shows how the Saudi state’s response to the challenges of the Gulf War served to historicize a national space, territorialize a national history, and ultimately refract both through new modes of capital accumulation. Praise for Archive Wars “An instant classic. With incredible insight, creativity, and courage, Rosie Bsheer peels away the political and institutional barriers that have so long mystified others seeking to understand Saudi Arabia. Bsheer tells us remarkable new things about the exercise and meaning of power in today’s Saudi Arabia.” —Toby Jones, Rutgers University, author of Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia “There are now two distinct eras in the writing of Saudi Arabian history: before Rosie Bsheer’s Archive Wars and after.” —Robert Vitalis, University of Pennsylvania, author of Oilcraft “Archive Wars explores with conceptual brilliance and historical aplomb the various forms of historical erasure central not just to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but to all modern states. In a finely-grained analysis, Rosie Bsheer rethinks the significance of archives, historicism, capital accumulation, and the remaking of the built environment. A must-read for all historians concerned with the materiality of modern state formation.” —Omnia El Shakry, University of California, Davis, author of The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt

Download or read book Saudi Arabia on the Edge written by Thomas W. Lippman and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the countries in the world that are vital to the strategic and economic interests of the United States, Saudi Arabia is the least understood by the American people. Saudi Arabia's unique place in Islam makes it indispensable to a constructive relationship between the non-Muslim West and the Muslim world. For all its wealth, the country faces daunting challenges that it lacks the tools to meet: a restless and young population, a new generation of educated women demanding opportunities in a closed society, political stagnation under an octogenarian leadership, religious extremism and intellectual backwardness, social division, chronic unemployment, shortages of food and water, and troublesome neighbors. Today's Saudi people, far better informed than all previous generations, are looking for new political institutions that will enable them to be heard, but these aspirations conflict with the kingdom's strict traditions and with the House of Saud's determination to retain all true power. Meanwhile, the country wishes to remain under the protection of American security but still clings to a system that is antithetical to American values. Basing his work on extensive interviews and field research conducted in the kingdom from 2008 through 2011 under the auspices of the Council on Foreign Relations, Thomas W. Lippman dissects this central Saudi paradox for American readers, including diplomats, policymakers, scholars, and students of foreign policy.

Download or read book The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia written by David E. Long and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the outstanding book on Saudi Arabia for readers desiring a comprehensive view of the subject embracing both background and contemporary foreign policy issues."--David L. Mack, chairman, Department of National Security Policy, National War College "The first general survey of Saudi Arabia, to my knowledge, that combines scholarly analysis with breadth of scope, as well as a detailed and nuanced understanding of the country."--Bernard Reich, George Washington University David Long's portrait of Saudi Arabia depicts the kingdom as one of the least understood countries in the world. Encompassing all facets of Saudi life--the land and people, their religion and culture, the country's history, politics, economics, and foreign policy--the book presents scholarship in a highly readable narrative. Drawing upon extensive firsthand experience, Long depicts the often contradictory impulses of a country committed both to modernization and to the values of a traditional society. Alongside his discussion of oil and the Saudi economy, for example, is a chapter on the annual Hajj, or pilgrimage, to Makkah, a subject about which little has been written in English but one that is far more important to the millions of Muslims worldwide than the kingdom's oil wealth. At every turn Long looks at issues from a Saudi point of view as he explores the kingdom's successes, failures, and, most of all, its remarkable resiliency in response to the pressures of social change. David E. Long, a retired Foreign Service officer, has been a visiting professor at several American universities and is currently an international consultant on the Middle East and international terrorism. His publications include The Anatomy of Terrorism (1990) and The United States and Saudi Arabia (1985).

Download or read book A History of Saudi Arabia written by Madawi al-Rasheed and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition covers the political, economic and social developments in Saudi Arabia since 9/11 to the present day.

Download or read book Saudi Inc The Arabian Kingdom s Pursuit of Profit and Power written by Ellen R. Wald and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the most profitable company in the world, Saudi Aramco, and the story behind the family that ruthlessly maneuvered to control this multi-trillion dollar enterprise. The Saudi royal family and Aramco leadership are, and almost always have been, motivated by ambitions of long-term strength and profit. They use Islamic law, traditional ideology, and harsh justice to maintain stability and their own power, but underneath the thobes and abayas and behind the religious fanaticism and illiberalism lies a most sophisticated and ruthless business enterprise. Today, that corporation is poised to pull off the biggest IPO in history. Over more than a century, fed by ambition and oil wealth, al Saud, as the royal family is known, has come from next to nothing to rule as absolute monarchs, a contrast with the world around them and modernity itself. The story starts with Saudi Arabia's founder, Abdul Aziz, a lowly refugee embarking on a daring gambit to reconquer his family's ancestral home?the mud-walled city of Riyadh. It takes readers almost to present day, when the multinational family business has made al Saud the wealthiest family in the world and on the cusp of a new transformation. Now al Saud and its family business, Aramco, are embarking on their most ambitious move: taking the company public and preparing the country for the next generation.

Download or read book Awakening Islam written by Stéphane Lacroix and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amidst the roil of war and instability across the Middle East, the West is still searching for ways to understand the Islamic world. Stéphane Lacroix has now given us a penetrating look at the political dynamics of Saudi Arabia, one of the most opaque of Muslim countries and the place that gave birth to Osama bin Laden. The result is a history that has never been told before. Lacroix shows how thousands of Islamist militants from Egypt, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries, starting in the 1950s, escaped persecution and found refuge in Saudi Arabia, where they were integrated into the core of key state institutions and society. The transformative result was the Sahwa, or “Islamic Awakening,” an indigenous social movement that blended political activism with local religious ideas. Awakening Islam offers a pioneering analysis of how the movement became an essential element of Saudi society, and why, in the late 1980s, it turned against the very state that had nurtured it. Though the “Sahwa Insurrection” failed, it has bequeathed the world two very different, and very determined, heirs: the Islamo-liberals, who seek an Islamic constitutional monarchy through peaceful activism, and the neo-jihadis, supporters of bin Laden's violent campaign. Awakening Islam is built upon seldom-seen documents in Arabic, numerous travels through the country, and interviews with an unprecedented number of Saudi Islamists across the ranks of today’s movement. The result affords unique insight into a closed culture and its potent brand of Islam, which has been exported across the world and which remains dangerously misunderstood.

Download or read book Saudi Arabia written by Paul Aarts and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-12 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Saudi royal family has survived the events of the Arab Spring intact and unscathed. Any major upheavals were ostensibly averted with the help of oil revenues, while the Kingdom's influential clerics conveniently declared all forms of protest to be against Islam. Saudi dollars bent events to the Kingdom's will in the Arab world-particularly in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, but also in Egypt and Lebanon, Saudi cash has had a profound impact. Does this mean that all is well in Saudi Arabia itself, which has an extremely youthful population ruled by a gerontocracy? Problems endemic in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria-youth unemployment, corruption and repression-are also evident in the Kingdom and while young Saudis may not yet be taking to the streets, on Twitter and Facebook their discontent is manifest. Saudi Arabia remains the dominant player in the Gulf, and the fall of the House of Saud would have explosive repercussions on the GCC while the knock-on effect worldwide would be immeasurable. Saudi Arabia is the only oil exporter capable of acting as a 'swing producer', a fact of which this book reminds us. Aarts and Roelants have drawn a compelling picture of a Middle East power which, while not presently endangered, may soon deviate from the trajectory established by the House of Saud.

Download or read book Saudi Arabia in the Balance written by Paul Aarts and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2007-09 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saudi Arabia in the Balance brings together today’s leading scholars in the field to investigate the domestic, regional, and international affairs of a Kingdom whose policies have so far eluded the outside world. With the passing of King Fahd and the installation of King Abdullah, a contemporary understanding of Saudi Arabia is essential as the Kingdom enters a new era of leadership and particularly when many Saudis themselves are increasingly debating, and actively shaping, the future direction of domestic and foreign affairs. Each of the essays, framed in the aftermath of 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, offers a systematic perspective into the country’s political and economic realities as well as the tension between its regional and global roles. Important topics covered include U.S. and Saudi relations; Saudi oil policy; the Islamist threat to the monarchy regime; educational opportunities; the domestic rise of liberal opposition; economic reform; the role of the royal family; and the country's foreign relations in a changing international world. Contributors: Paul Aarts, Madawi Al-Rasheed, Rachel Bronson, Iris Glosemeyer, Steffen Hertog, Yossi Kostiner, Stéphane Lacroix, Giacomo Luciani, Monica Malik, Roel Meijer, Tim Niblock, Gerd Nonneman, Michaela Prokop, Abdulaziz Sager, Guido Steinberg

Download or read book The Saudi Arabian Economy written by Mohamed A. Ramady and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-09-05 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Saudi Arabian economy has changed almost beyond recognition since the oil boom days of the 1980s, and the Kingdom itself has changed too economically, socially, and demographically. In the second edition of The Saudi Arabian Economy, Mohamed Ramady uses several overlapping themes to establish and develop a framework for studying the fundamental challenges to the Saudi economy. Particular attention is paid to the benefits of short-term planning and long-term diversification intended to shield the economy from potentially de-stabilizing oil price fluctuations and the pace and diversity of domestic reforms. The author examines the core strengths and evolution of various financial institutions and the Saudi stock market in the face of globalization, before analyzing the private sector in detail. Topics discussed include: • The hydrocarbon and minerals sector, including the emergence of the competitive petrochemical sector • The impact of small and medium sized businesses and the evolving role of “family” businesses • The growing role of women in the Saudi economy • The role of privatization and FDI as engines of change and the position of public-private-partnerships • The establishment of a foundation for a knowledge-based economy Finally, the author offers an analysis of the key challenges facing the Saudi economy, paying particular attention to the potential costs and benefits of globalization, and membership in the WTO. Employment, education, economic and social stability, and Saudi Arabia’s place in the Gulf Cooperation Council, as well as Saudi Arabia’s evolving strategic economic relations with China and other countries are offered as keys to the consensus building needed to ensure the Kingdom’s healthy economic future.

Download or read book Vision or Mirage written by David Rundell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Clear-eyed and illuminating.' Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor 'A rich, superbly researched, balanced history of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.' General David Petraeus, former Commander U.S. Central Command and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency 'Destined to be the best single volume on the Kingdom.' Ambassador Chas Freeman, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Assistant Secretary of Defense 'Should be prescribed reading for a new generation of political leaders.' Sir Richard Dearlove, former Chief of H.M. Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Something extraordinary is happening in Saudi Arabia. A traditional, tribal society once known for its lack of tolerance is rapidly implementing significant economic and social reforms. An army of foreign consultants is rewriting the social contract, King Salman has cracked down hard on corruption, and his dynamic though inexperienced son, the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, is promoting a more tolerant Islam. But is all this a new vision for Saudi Arabia or merely a mirage likely to dissolve into Iranian-style revolution? David Rundell - one of America's foremost experts on Saudi Arabia - explains how the country has been stable for so long, why it is less so today, and what is most likely to happen in the future. The book is based on the author's close contacts and intimate knowledge of the country where he spent 15 years living and working as a diplomat. Vision or Mirage demystifies one of the most powerful, but least understood, states in the Middle East and is essential reading for anyone interested in the power dynamics and politics of the Arab World.

Download or read book Kings and Presidents written by Bruce Riedel and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insider's account of the often-fraught U.S.-Saudi relationship Saudi Arabia and the United States have been partners since 1943, when President Roosevelt met with two future Saudi monarchs. Subsequent U.S. presidents have had direct relationships with those kings and their successors—setting the tone for a special partnership between an absolute monarchy with a unique Islamic identity and the world's most powerful democracy. Although based in large part on economic interests, the U.S.-Saudi relationship has rarely been smooth. Differences over Israel have caused friction since the early days, and ambiguities about Saudi involvement—or lack of it—in the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States continue to haunt the relationship. Now, both countries have new, still-to be-tested leaders in President Trump and King Salman. Bruce Riedel for decades has followed these kings and presidents during his career at the CIA, the White House, and Brookings. This book offers an insider's account of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, with unique insights. Using declassified documents, memoirs by both Saudis and Americans, and eyewitness accounts, this book takes the reader inside the royal palaces, the holy cities, and the White House to gain an understanding of this complex partnership.

Download or read book Saudi Arabia written by Nadav Safran and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining vast scholarship and a deep understanding of Arab culture, Nadav Safran has written a sophisticated book about the politics of Saudi Arabia. In a narrative that emphasizes the Saudis' sense of the precariousness of their state and of their position in the Middle East, Safran demystifies the behavior of the Kingdom's rulers. Security has long been the predominant concern of Saudi Arabia. In 1981, the Kingdom's defense and security budget was an immense $25 billion, the fourth largest in the world, after the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, and the highest in the world on a per capita basis. Safran traces the roots of Saudi preoccupation with security through half a century, discerning political struggles and policy differences in the Saud family and how they have affected the position of the country. His treatment provides an enlightening perspective on the interplay of the politics of the elite; shifting inter-Arab alignments and rivalries; war, revolution, and other cataclysmic events in the Persian Gulf; the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict; and the involvement of the United States in the Middle East.