The rise and rise of the Bin Laden family is one of the great stories of the twentieth century: the repercussions of that rise have, of course, already deeply marked the twenty-first. And yet it is a story that has never been properly told. Their affairs shrouded in secrecy, living in one of the most powerful, closed, unaccountable countries on earth, the Bin Ladens have - until now -successfully fended off all attempts to understand the world from which Osama sprang. Steve Coil"s "The Bin Ladens" is the history of a family and its fortune: of how a young, illiterate Yemeni bricklayer, Mohammed Bin Laden, went to the new, oil-rich country of Saudi Arabia and quickly became a vital figure in its development, building great mosques and highways and making himself and his many children into millionaires. It is the story of the Saudi royal family, whom the Bin Ladens served loyally, and without whose capricious favour they would have been nothing. And it is the story of the...