Hardback: No dynasty lasts beyond the lifespan of three generations. - Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah
Blood and Oil (2020) is longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award 2020.
Thirty-five-year-old Mohammed bin Salman's sudden rise stunned the world. Political and business leaders such as former UK prime minister Tony Blair and WME chairman Ari Emanuel flew out to meet with the crown prince and came away convinced that his desire to reform the kingdom was sincere. He spoke passionately about bringing women into the workforce and toning down Saudi Arabia's restrictive Islamic law. He lifted the ban on women driving and explored investments in Silicon Valley.
But 'MBS' began to betray an erratic interior beneath the polish laid on by scores of consultants and public relations experts like McKinsey & Company. The allegations of excess and about the brutality of his regime began to slip out. Then there was the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. While stamping out dissent in the Saudi royal family by holding three hundred members in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel for months, he continued to exhibit his extreme wealth, including the purchase of a $70 million chateau in Europe and one of the world's most expensive yachts. It seemed that he did not understand or care about how the outside world would react to his flexing of autocratic muscle.
Blood and Oil is a gripping work of investigative journalism about the precipitous ascent of one of the world's most decisive and dangerous new leaders, and the simultaneous fraying Western-Saudi relations. Caught in his net are well-known US bankers, Hollywood figures, and politicians, all eager to help the charming Crown Prince with extraordinary powers, hunger for lucre, a tight relationship with President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and an apparent willingness to break anything - and anyone - that gets in the way of his vision. If his bid fails, Saudi Arabia has the potential to become an unstable failed state and a magnet for Islamic extremists. And if his bid to transform his country succeeds, even in part, it will have consequences around the world.
From co-author of Billion Dollar Whale Bradley Hope and fellow award-winning Wall Street Journal reporter Justin Scheck, a revelatory look at the inner workings of the royal family of Saudi Arabia, the world's most powerful ruling clan, and how the struggle for succession produced the charismatic but ruthless Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
About the authors: Bradley Hope, based in London, is the New York Times bestselling coauthor of Billion Dollar Whale and covers finance and malfeasance for the Wall Street Journal. Before that he spent six years as a Middle East correspondent. Hope is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Gerald Loeb Award winner.
Justin Scheck, based in New York, has worked at the Wall Street Journal since 2007, covering white collar crime across four continents. He has been writing about Saudi Arabia since 2016 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2020.
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