Reviews for Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia

The average rating for Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-06-12 00:00:00 Paul Gill Well, what an excellent book and so important at this time in history. While the major focus of Inside the Kingdom is the history of Saudia Arabia and it's interactions with the world from the mid 1970s forward, history of the founding of the house of Saud is provided. This was enough for an uninformed reader such as this one to follow the rest of the story. I would suggest that readers not worry if they lose track of names while reading this book...I can almost promise that it will happen to most Western readers. The major players will become obvious. The major factors in Saudi Arabia from the start have been the monarchy and the clerics. The interplay between the two has both helped and hindered the nation in the past and has had a spectacular impact in the time frame covered here. I have learned so much that now makes the last 10 to 15 years of world and U.S. history more fathomable, not reasonable, but I now know where it came from. I had heard of the origins of Osama Bin Laden and other Saudi young men who grew to be terrorists but now I have a better feeling for the factors that led to that end and the great difficulty the monarchy has in making change in a society based on religion. I really think this should be required reading for high school students. We as a people need to know more about others in the world. Knowledge hopefully can lead to better understanding. As another reviewer wrote, I hope King Abdullah does get his university.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-06-15 00:00:00 Joseph Lovoy My wife and I are about to begin an assignment in Saudi Arabia that will have us living there for months or possibly years, thus my need to quickly increase my knowledge about the Kingdom and its culture. This book by Robert Lacey is actually a follow-up to a much larger volume titled simply, The Kingdom, that Lacey first published in 1981. This, basicaly, is a sequel, but one written with the purpose of understanding the events that occurred after 1981 related to Saudi Arabia, specifically the war in Afghanistan, the rise of Al-Qaeda, 9/11, the embassy attacks within Saudi Arabia, and Guantanamo Bay. The title, therefore, is both accurate and inaccurate: if anything, Lacey's premise is that the last 30 years has forced Saudi Arabia to come to the realization that the Kingdom affects and can be affected by events outside its borders, for better or worse, and can no longer be denied by the King. It's a fascinating book, and Lacey an engaging and smooth writer. Things I was able to learn from the narrative include finally understanding some of Saudi Arabia's attitude towards its neighbors (as well as sections of its own population) by Lacey's clear explanation of the Sunni and Shia differences. The book also illustrates the strange shift in Saudi attitudes towards hardline Muslim extremists and business-focused Westerners by focusing on several of the important power brokers in addition to the Al-Saud family. The book was published in 2009, but based on what I've already learned from my first trip to the country, is in need of a couple of additional chapters, as Saudi Arabia continues to both embrace and fight a rapid pace of change. Just in the last year, a university dedicated to women's education has been completed near the Riyadh airport and several economic cities dedicated to trade, banking, and manufacturing are due to be completed in the next year. Women continue to press for more rights (not just the right to drive, but with regards to family and property rights) and the religious police have recently been pulled back from some more egrigious behavior. All of these are on a pendulum, one that Inside the Kingdom reveals can just as easily swing back in a more conservative direction. It's going to be an interesting time here.