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Mohammed bin Salman and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia
by Karen Elliott House
Based on exclusive interviews, an eye-opening biography of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), head of the House of Saud, the calculating ruler of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and a central Middle East power broker.
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and former Wall Street Journal publisher, Karen House has gained unprecedented insights into Saudi Arabia and its controversial leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman through her more than forty years of experience covering the Arab kingdom.
House reveals a leader who is both Peter the Great—determined to modernize his nation—and Ivan the Terrible—a tyrant who jails his political opponents and rival princes. Drawing on extensive interviews with the Crown Prince, his royal relatives, and his inner ring of advisors, The Man Who Would Be King explains in full what shaped the man who is reshaping Saudi Arabia.
Drawing on fresh, headline-making reporting, House balances both sides of this complex ruler. We are introduced to MBS the visionary, who has ushered in reforms for women to participate more equitably, encouraged tourism to the Kingdom, and placed long term bets on green energy and trillion dollar mega-projects like The Line, a hundred-mile-long enclosed futuristic city in the desert that will be run by AI. And we meet MBS the Machiavellian prince, widely accused of having Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi murdered, and of sports washing the kingdom's reputation by investing billions in teams globally, from Premiere League soccer to the LIV (liv) golf tour to the World Cup which the Kingdom will host in 2034.
The Man Who Would Be King reveals MBS in all his complexities, from his rise to power and his vision for the future of his Kingdom, to his ruthless maneuvers to project power—a shrewd broker working to seal a viable deal with Israel and bring peace to Gaza while he cuts oil supplies to manipulate Western politics. It is an unprecedent and much needed in-depth portrait of the leader who, at only thirty-nine, will be a major player on the world stage for the next half century.
"Longtime journalist House draws on 40 years of travels to Saudi Arabia to present a portrait of a nation transforming, for good and ill...A well-crafted key to understanding a central player in world politics." —Kirkus Reviews
"Former Wall Street Journal publisher House paints an uneven portrait of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince...[T]his feels like a missed opportunity." —Publishers Weekly
"An insider's insights into a transformative leader who may turn out to be the next Lee Kuan Yew—or the next Gorbachev?" —Graham T. Allison, author of Destined for War
"Karen Elliott House brings her decades of experience and deep personal relationships within Saudi Arabia to offer her reader a compelling, balanced view of where the Kingdom stands today. Offering a portrait of the Crown Prince that few could paint, Elliott House captures both the immense ambition driving Mohammed bin Salman's vision for Saudi Arabia and the significant challenges facing its realization. A compelling read for those interested in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, the evolution of religion and society in the Arab world, the global energy transition, and the exercise of geopolitical power in a turbulent age." —Meghan O'Sullivan, Former Deputy National Security Adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan
This information about The Man Who Would Be King was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Karen Elliott House is a former executive of Dow Jones & Company and publisher of the Wall Street Journal. She is also the author of On Saudi Arabia: It's People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines—and Future. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
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