MBS

I saw an excerpt from author Ben Hubbard in last week’s New York Times, and after swearing to myself I needed to focus instead on the 4-5 mammoth books I have already taken on, I was just too fascinated by the topic to not try this out. I read it straight through in just a few days — it was really really gripping.

This topic is obviously a sensitive one, and it is challenging to understand fact from fiction on any side, given the secrecy of the Kingdom and how much precaution is taken to uphold it. Many Americans are so confused and exhausted by the labyrinthine politics of Saudi Arabia that they discount it. That is a grave mistake: the region is just too important, both in resources and in it’s geographic geographic position, to ignore.

I was present in Saudi Arabia during some of the critical events and timelines recounted in this book, and it was interesting to see how Hubbard covered them from that vantage point. This is still very much a story in progress, and part of me continues to hold out some semblance of cautious hope that the country will still chart the philosophical path of equality and liberalization that it preached a few years ago. We will see.