Just Do It

Steve Coll

by Shaun Brady

Tue., March 31, 7:30 p.m., free, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, freelibrary.org

As the proverbial kingdom was lost for want of a nail, so it was that for the death of an ox, in Steve Coll's telling, the Towers fell.

The loss of one pack animal seems a humble beginning for a tale that ends with global jihad and a messy, seemingly never-ending war on terror, but the incident that begins Steve Coll's book, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (Penguin, $18), is the first of many little quirks of fate that shape the history of the bin Laden family.

The New Yorker scribe tells that story with epic sweep, exhaustive research and a touch of irreverence, making for a page-turner that is nonetheless crammed with densely packed detail. It reads like a mirror history of the 20th century, alternately reflecting, echoing and rebutting the familiar western narrative. The 54 children of Mohammed bin Laden almost inevitably form a microcosm of Saudi society and undertake the same struggle between the strictures of Islam and the temptations of modernity that define the region.

The tale unfolds as a series of parallels: the rising power of the al-Saud family comes to shape the rags-to-riches journey of patriarch Mohamed bin Laden; his death leaves his sons to trace divergent paths, exemplified by his profligate, freewheeling eldest, Salem, and the black sheep — you-know-who.