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The Osama bin Laden I Know
Peter Bergen
An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader
Free Press
January 2006
480 pages
ISBN: 0743278917
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
Osama
bin Laden has haunted the popular psyche and stymied the
world's
mightiest military for the last five years. Despite
President Bush's
declaration that he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive,"
despite being one
of the world's most notorious men, and despite the barrage
of coverage
surrounding him, Osama bin Laden remains at large -- and
shrouded in a
fog of anecdote and myth, rumor and fact.
Peter Bergen, author of the bestselling book
Holy War, Inc.,
offers an astounding, unparalleled portrait of bin Laden,
comprised of
Bergen's own interviews with more than fifty people who
have known bin
Laden personally, from his brother-in-law to his high
school English
teacher to former members of al Qaeda. The resulting
collage of voices
and memories affords an unprecedented glimpse into the life
and the
true nature of the man directly responsible for the largest
terror
attack in history. No journalist knows more
about Osama
bin Laden than Peter Bergen. In 1997, well before bin Laden
became a
household name, Bergen met with him, and has since followed
his
activities closely. After an insightful introduction -- in
which Bergen
recounts how, at their meeting, bin Laden "presented
himself as a
soft-spoken cleric, rather than as the firebreathing leader
of a global
terrorist organization" -- Bergen stands aside to make way
for the
voices of dozens of people with firsthand, sometimes
intimate
experience with the al Qaeda leader. Current
conventional
wisdom seems to be that bin Laden and his organization have
faded in
importance, but Bergen argues urgently that that
perspective is far
from accurate -- indeed, each day that bin Laden remains
free adds to
al Qaeda's public relations triumph, for his legend only
grows among
his supporters. More concretely, he continues to provide
broad
strategic guidance for jihadists -- his many statements
released on
video or audio tape since 9/11, for instance, have exerted
direct
influence on terrorists' actions. In 2003 the world
suffered more
significant terror attacks than had occurred in a single
year during
the previous two decades -- and in 2004, the number of
attacks doubled
over 2003. In 2004, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Iraq's most
ferocious
insurgent leader, pledged his allegiance to bin Laden, a
sign of the
continued importance of al Qaeda's leader. How
did Osama
bin Laden transform himself from a shy, polite, middle-of-
his-class
schoolboy to commander of the world's most formidable
terrorist
organization? Where was bin Laden on 9/11, and what was his
reaction to
it? How did he escape from Tora Bora? Is al Qaeda a top-down
organization or a loose ideological alliance? What is it
about this man
that draws hundreds of thousands of followers, and makes
men willing to
fly airplanes into buildings at his command? This
definitive and
engaging portrait gives the American public its first true,
enduring
insight into a man who has declared us his greatest
enemy.
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