100 Books Like MBS

Another post-Khashoggi product, by two Wall Street Journal reporters, this volume is longer than Hubbard’s but doesn’t get as close to what may make MbS tick. Their reporting’s strength though is chronicling the initial steps of MbS’s Vision 2030 plan to transform the kingdom, and the background to his pet project – the $500 billion futuristic city of NEOM in the northwest of the kingdom.

They write: “Mohammed decided to build not just a city but a mini-kingdom. It would have cutting-edge technology and medical care, all powered by solar energy rather than oil.” The vision statement for the project reads: “The land of the future, where the greatest minds and best talents are empowered to embody pioneering ideas and exceed boundaries in a world inspired by imagination.”

London-based Professor Al-Rasheed combines the objectivity of an academic with years of criticism of the House of Saud, and her consequent life in exile. One assumes the title is an allusion to Louis XIV of France who ruled for 72 years. A tougher read than the journalistic flows of the other books listed here, it is nevertheless very solid and perceptive.

Better known these days for his writing on the palace dramas of the British royal family and being the historical adviser to the Netflix series The Crown, Lacey previously wrote the 1981 doorstopper The Kingdom: The History of Saudi Arabia to 1979. That was the year of the seizure by Sunni extremists of the Grand Mosque in Mecca as well as the Iranian (Shia) revolution.

This latest volume, published in 2009, looks at Saudi Arabia and the transition which was already taking place before the current King Salman took the throne and before anybody had heard of MbS.

With this year’s 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, this book, published on the 10th anniversary, is a useful reminder of the events of that day and the subsequent investigations of why it happened.

The civil case against Saudi Arabia for alleged complicity with the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi, continues, albeit with little publicity. That is likely to change. Osama bin Laden’s own legal reckoning was less formal of course – the Saudi whose name has become synonymous with terrorism died in a hail of bullets from U.S. Navy SEALs. (I can also recommend the movie of that event Zero Dark Thirty.)

A highly readable tome, Cooper’s account of how the oil politics of the 1970s revolutionized U.S. foreign policy and the Persian Gulf is a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about the political landscape of the Middle East. Cooper traces the personal interactions among the Shah of Iran, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford, and the House of Saud in the midst of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the consequent oil embargo, the formation of OPEC, and the early stirrings of revolution in Iran. Perhaps most helpful, this book dispels many misperceptions about Iran under the Shah while also showing how the United States played an integral role in weakening his regime prior to the 1979 revolution.

Gordon Wood is one of the giants of a generation of historians of the Revolution and the early Republic.

This book covers the 1790s and the years of the nineteenth century up through the War of 1812. Both Federalists and Jeffersonians faced the task of navigating the young republic through the turbulent waters of a world war between revolutionary France, America’s Revolutionary War ally, and mercantile Britain, its chief trading partner, that lasted with only short intervals between 1793 and 1815.

Wood leans somewhat to the Jeffersonians, who were more in line (in his view and, as I was reading him, mine) with most Americans who became less deferential and hierarchical during and immediately after the Revolution.

For me Graham Greene is the master of the literary novel of political intrigue, the literary political thriller writer who spans the globe in his narrative reach. It is difficult to focus on only one of his novels, all have influenced, moved, and taught me, but for the purposes of this list I chose The Comedians.

When I discovered Graham Greene decades ago, I started reading his many novels and then rereading them, immersed in his worlds, trying to learn how he did what he did, but of course, what he did was unique to his perspective, experience, and talent.

The Comedians spins out its story in the dangerous landscape of Haiti under the regime of Papa Doc and the Tontons Macoute secret police. I still remember the sinister tone and compelling narrative drive of the book on my first reading as the innocent American, the sophisticated returning hotel… show more.

This is a fantastic book about a specific moment in Nepal’s history: the collapse of the 250-year-old Shah monarchy in 2008.

Mocko focuses on the three major Hindu festivals that regularly reinforced the monarchy: showing the vest of the Red God in May; receiving the blessing offered by the living goddess, Kumari, in September; and visiting the royal goddess, Taleju, in October. The removal of the king from prominent positions in all of these rituals has in no way impinged upon the celebrations of these festivals that have become even more popular in the intervening years.

Mass formation psychosis causes people to lose contact with reality. Case-in-point: the apotheosis of Abraham Lincoln. The author presents a cogent case against the 16th president’s policies of “internal improvements,” high tariffs, and a national central bank (the failed and rejected Hamiltonian policies of the Whig party and Henry Clay). Lincoln insisted upon instituting mercantilism—a strong central government that dispenses special privileges to wealthy and influential corporations, who then support the central government, contravening the Constitution. In a reality stranger than fiction, he killed an estimated 620,000-750,000 Americans in a war upon the Southern states and their right to secede against tariff tyranny; disabled the sovereignty of the states; and did away with habeas corpus by arresting any who objected to his policies, setting precedents that have gutted an intimidated America ever since.

More than a decade after the eruption of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ (an objectionable concept that Mabon avoids using) in 2011, these events and their implications continue to fascinate students of the Middle East.

Mabon’s book joins the many works on the subject. However, it offers a unique perspective, one that integrates political theory and is inspired by the works of Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Gilles Deleuze, and Achille Mbembe, among others, as lenses through which to explore the implications of the collapse of sovereign borders and the resurfacing of communal identities, which in turn have led to the rise of protracted conflicts in the region, within, and more recently also between states in the region.

The book’s research is based on fieldwork in countries across the region and multiple interviews with various individuals and stakeholders in these countries. It is an excellent read for anyone wishing to gain empirical… show more.