Understanding the Bin Ladens

On May 2, The New America Foundation hosted a book event for President and CEO Steve Coll’s new book The Bin Ladens. An MP3 audio recording can be downloaded below, while video is available at right.

Coll delivered a talk about the experience of Saudi Arabia, dealing with the pressures and prizes of modernity and globalization, through the prism of the Bin Laden family. He conveyed the diversity of experience that permeated the different members of the family.

Coll spoke of three prominent family members: Muhammad (the family patriarch), Salem (the oldest son) and Osama. He spoke of reinterpreting Osama as a member of this powerful family and as a Saudi dissident, hoping to compliment the existing body of knowledge on the notorious Bin Laden.

Ultimately, Osama Bin Laden was an expression of his membership in a talented, well-connected Saudi family. He shared many of the outstanding talents of his father and older brother including: the ability to lead a diverse team toward a common goal, an embrace of modern technology, marketing and branding savvy, and comfort of preforming in front of an audience. Coll’s book shows the diversity and remarkable skills of the Bin Laden family while also trying to help explain the environment that ultimately produced its most notorious member.

-Jonathan Wallace, Assistant to the President

Participants

• Steve Coll
  President and CEO
  New America Foundation
  Staff Writer, The New Yorker
  Author, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

• Peter Bergen
  Schwartz Senior Fellow
  New America Foundation
  Author, The Osama Bin Laden I Know

Moderator

• Steve Clemons
  Director, American Strategy Program
  Publisher, www.TheWashingtonNote.com