The Saudis

In this updated insider's look at Saudi Arabia, Mackey reveals the chaos of a country in transformation: grappling with modernity, coming to terms with its own wealth, and battling to maintain an influential stance in an altogether new world. 2 maps.

Actress, producer, and occasional chauffeur Jayne Amelia Larson offers a funny and insightful memoir about the time she spent as a driver for members of the Saudi royal family visiting Beverly Hills, detailing her invitation inside one of the world's most closely guarded monarchies.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 politi, 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. A Choice Outstanding Academic Book 'If you read or own just one book on Saudi Arabia, make sure it is this one' -- Middle East Quarterly 'Combines a wealth of fascinating detail with rigorous and penetrating analysis.' -- Bernard Lewis 'An outstanding book: a study of the Saudi state rich in historical documentation. Comprehensive and measured.' -- Fred Halliday 'It will become required reading for all those interested in the country's shaping and development over the past two centuries.' -- Tim Niblock

This accessible scholarly work traces the regional politics of the Shia in the Eastern Province of Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia since the nineteenth century. The first book in English on the topic, it casts new light on the survival strategies and political mobilization of the Shia community as it confronts the repressive machinery of the Saudi regime.