Arabias Hidden America

"In those days of random destruction, and trigger-happy militiamen, one never knew what to expect to see on the streets. I was doing my grocery shopping one afternoon when two militia boys rushed past. One had three revolvers stuffed in his belt and the other had two bullet-belts crisscrossing his chest, and two Kalashnikovs slung over his shoulder. Both were carrying bouquets of red roses. It was Mother's Day." (from "Arabia's Hidden America") --- Author Fadia Basrawi, a Saudi Arab, grew up in the strictly circumscribed and tailor-made 'desert Disneyland' of Aramco (the Arabian American Oil Company). This slice of modern suburban middle-class America was located in Dharan, one of the leading cities of Saudi Arabia, a theocratic Muslim kingdom run according to strict Wahabbi Shari'a law. Eventually, Fadia moved to Beirut, the glitzy 'Paris of the Middle East, ' to attend high school. In Beirut she fell in love with a passionate and idealistic Lebanese journalist with whom she eloped against her parents' wishes, subsequently getting caught up in Lebanon's fifteen-year civil war while raising a family of five children. Providing a fascinating account of a Saudi woman's painful journey from naive Aramcon girl to life as a resident of a war-torn capital city, this book provides new insight into two very different Middle Eastern worlds about which so little is known by those living outside the region

In this fascinating history of the discovery, development, and exploitation of Middle East oil, an international journalist tells a largely unknown story rich in drama, conflict, and comic interludes. Illustrations.

This Research Handbook offers crucial ethical perspectives on navigating the increasingly complex and contested landscape of contemporary energy law. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it brings together diverse scholarship and expertise from academia, international organizations, legal practice and the judiciary to address wide-ranging issues linking energy and law to ethical drivers such as wealth, peace and war, development, climate change, and use and abuse of natural resources.

This is not only a travel book but a documentary on inter-cultural relationships between the different races and nationalities comprising the huge expatriate population and native Arab residents of the oil-rich peninsula.

Synopsis Forgotten Lost and Hidden America 2: Sequel is a continuation of the social issues growing up through the seventies and following years to come. The main character, Blake, after serving some time in prisonback in his old community, he witnessed a negative transformation in the communitythe environment has improved, but many of the people werent the same due to drug addictions, alcohol abuse, unemployment, and immigration. This story raises several issues to bring about some awareness as the author sees it. After some reviews of the first book, the author believes that he needs to explain the two main characters in the story, Sputnik and Blake. The name Sputnik is actually a nickname of the author, but he didnt use the name because it was his nickname. He used the name because of what it represents, the name derived from the Russians, Soviet Union, back in 1957. They sent up in orbit the first successful satellite and called it Sputnik. What does a satellite do? It sends signals to your television, radio, phone, and computer, and it communicates information. In the story, what does Sputnik do? Hes a mentor; he communicates information about the street life to Blake. Whos Blake? Blake is a typical Black youth (Blake, black), which also has some personal attributes of the authors life. These characters were befitting of the story the author wanted to present. Some of the story is fabricated, but most of it is true. Some of the characters are fabricated but realistic. Through these characters, the author intended to capture some of the things he witnessed and heard about as a youth. People he looked up to growing up in the community, including his brother, he didnt know enough about their life story, so he put bits and piece of their attributes in the character of Sputnik and Blake to tell this story. Therefore, to those who might misunderstand the authors intention, I hope now you have a better understanding. In spite of some issues mentioned about American and Foreign Muslim communities, there are many sincere, practicing, dedicated, good Muslim brothers and sisters of all races. Im just pointing out what I experienced and spoke to other African American brothers about, who acknowledge a similar experience in these communities, and there are as many good Hispanic and Caucasian people, but it doesnt seem like they are the ones running and controlling things.

An Oprah.com “Must-Read Book” Award-winning journalist Jeanne Marie Laskas reveals “enlightening, entertaining, and often poignant”* profiles of America's working class—the forgotten men and women who make our country run. Take the men of Hopedale Mining company in Cadiz, Ohio. Laskas spent several weeks with them, both below and above ground, and by the end, you will know not only about their work, but about Pap and his dying mom, Smitty and the mail-order bride who stood him up at the airport, and Scotty and his thwarted dreams of becoming a boxing champion. That is only one hidden world. Others that she explores: an Alaskan oil rig, a migrant labor camp in Maine, the air traffic control center at LaGuardia Airport in New York, a beef ranch in Texas, a landfill in California, a long-haul trucker in Iowa, a gun shop in Arizona, and the Cincinnati Ben-Gals cheerleaders, mere footnotes in the moneymaking spectacle that is professional football. “Jeanne Marie Laskas is a reporting and writing powerhouse. She doesn’t just interview the people who dig our coal and extract our oil, she goes deep into the mines and tundra with them. With beauty, wit, curiosity, and grace, she finds the hidden soul of America. Hidden America is essential reading.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

A National Book Award Finalist, a New York Times bestseller and one of the most highly-acclaimed books of the year, A Hologram for the King is a sprawling novel about the decline of American industry from one of the most important, socially-aware novelists of our time. In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman named Alan Clay pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy's gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment--and a moving story of how we got here.

The rise and rise of the Bin Laden family is one of the great stories of the twentieth century; its repercussions have already deeply marked the twenty-first. Until now, however, it is a story that has never been fully told, as the Bin Ladens have successfully fended off attempts to understand the family circles from which Osama sprang. In this the family has been abetted by the kingdom it calls home, Saudi Arabia, one of the most closed societies on earth. Steve Coll’s The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century is the groundbreaking history of a family and its fortune. It chronicles a young illiterate Yemeni bricklayer, Mohamed Bin Laden, who went to the new, oil-rich country of Saudi Arabia and quickly became a vital figure in its development, building great mosques and highways and making himself and many of his children millionaires. It is also a story of the Saudi royal family, whom the Bin Ladens served loyally and without whose capricious favor they would have been nothing. And it is a story of tensions and contradictions in a country founded on extreme religious purity, which then became awash in oil money and dazzled by the temptations of the West. In only two generations the Bin Ladens moved from a famine-stricken desert canyon to luxury jets, yachts, and private compounds around the world, even going into business with Hollywood celebrities. These religious and cultural gyrations resulted in everything from enthusiasm for America—exemplified by Osama’s free-living pilot brother Salem—to an overwhelming determination to destroy it. The Bin Ladens is a meticulously researched, colorful, shocking, entertaining, and disturbing narrative of global integration and its limitations. It encapsulates the unsettling contradictions of globalization in the story of a single family who has used money, mobility, and technology to dramatically varied ends.