Rating: 
Summary: 5 stars for relevance and clarity
Review: As another reviewer commented, one should not pick up Carmen bin Ladin's book in search of literary artistry or creative style; but that's okay. These were not bin Ladin's motives for writing the book. She has a story to tell that is immensely relevant to these times, and every citizen of the world should read it, particularly my fellow Americans. In a clear and direct narrative voice, bin Ladin tells of her life as a semi-outsider in the ultra-conservative and closed society of Saudi Arabia from the 1970s through the 1990s, and of what she came to know about men and women born and raised in this culture. After reading this, the fanaticism of Muslim zealots like Osama bin Ladin is just as frightening and repugnant as ever, but no longer such an incomprehensible thing. The type of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, with its strict, medieval interpretation of the teachings of Mohammad, cannot help but produce these individuals. How many of us are really aware of the subtleties of Saudi culture? We know that they are very conservative and they are Muslim, and that's about it; but that's not enough for us to know, especially in light of current events. Carmen bin Ladin, in writing this book, tells not only a moving story of personal courageousness but also achieves the goal of giving the world the highly unsettling truth about an otherwise enigmatic and shielded society.
Rating:
Summary: Riveting, quick read
Review: Carmen Bin Laden is the ex-wife of Yeslam Bin Laden, Osama Bin Laden's older brother. After 9/11, unfortunately her and her daughter's lives were turned inside out with our "accurate" media capturing the story of how one of her daughters "escaped" from New York a few days before 9/11. When in fact she had actually graduated from Columbia University and left to her home in Switzerland in June.
Carmen Bin Laden is the daughter of a Swiss man and Persian women. This gives her special insight into two different worlds. In addition, she visited and lived in America for a few years while her husband was studying at USC in California. Bin Laden starts this story out simply enough with how she meets Yeslam. They fall in love and get married. Yeslam desperately wants to live in Saudi Arabia after he graduates so they live there. When they get there, Carmen is hesitant, but her husband seems accommodating. After this, Carmen goes into detail about Saudi life, tradition, rituals, etc. This is all very fascinating. (Princess by Jean Sassoon is also a remarkable book of an actual Princess's life in Saudi Arabia).
Carmen tries desperately to make her life as "American" as she can. She remodels her home, invites Europeans, Americans and other diplomats on Thursdays, has a tennis court made, etc. What I really like is the fierce love that she has for her daughters and the devotion and respect she has (had) for Yeslam. All of these things coupled with Carmen's creative ability to try and transform Saudi Arabia into a more welcoming place make her life in Saudi Arabia bearable.
Of course, this book is not vivid or exceptionally written like some books are. But that's ok, this book is easy to understand, clear and concise. In my opinion, Carmen Bin Laden is intelligent (she understands different cultures and religions), brave (she writes this book to make her daughter's lives better), and devoted. I thank her for writing this book and giving an insight to us about life in Saudi Arabia.
Rating: 
Summary: Disquieting
Review: Carmen Bin Ladin was married to one of Osama's many brothers and spent many years in the 1970s and 80s living in Saudi Arabia with her husband, Yeslam. Carmen was herself the daughter of a Swiss father and an Iranian mother.
This memoire is not a fact-filled examination and dissection of Saudi or even Wahabi culture but rather a first-person view into a dark world, one that has not and most likely will not change for centuries. It saddened me to read this book - cultures are supposed to be active, to thrive, to adapt, but Saudi culture is portrayed as stilted, totally male-dominated and bereft of compassion. No wonder Ms. Bin Ladin divorced and returned to Switzerland in 1988, she feared what the invidious environment there would destroy her young daughters.
There are some things I would like to have seen in this book. For one, Ms. Bin Ladin was from the very upper crust of Saudi society and had an extremely wealthy and politically influential extended family. How then did ordinary Saudis live? And where did she see Saudi society heading?
I finished reading this book feeling unsettled. Ms. Bin Ladin paints an unflattering portrait of Saudi Arabia and its culture and gives us a great deal of anecdotal evidence to support our outsiders view that it is a culture with a lot of issues to grapple with. I hope more memoirs of this type are forthcoming for while Ms. Bin Ladin's one view is valuable, others will hopefully shed light on areas untouched by this book.
Rating:
Summary: answers many questions
Review: Have you ever wondered how on earth a Western woman could marry a man from a culture that is totally alien to hers? In Inside the Kingdom, Carmen Bin Laden tells the story of how she went from being a free spirited Swiss schoolgirl to the wife of one of the members of the Saudi Arabian Bin Laden clan. It was easy. She was young, he was charming, handsome, rich and seemingly easy going. They fell in love. She thought they were going to live in America and Europe. She was wrong.Imagine living in a place where it's against the law for you to show your face in public. Imagine not being able to go shopping even for your own clothes or personal items. Imagine shocking your in-laws becuase you want to go for a walk. One of the most vivid and sad scenes from the book describes how Carmen's husband had to make special arrangements in order for her to go to a grocery store to buy baby formula. While she rushed to the baby section the customers (all male) left the store and the staff turned their backs to her. Carmen quickly discovered to her horror that listening to music was considered sinful, reading books was considered odd and having a thought in one's pretty head was seen as completely unnatural. Eventually, the marriage soured and Carmen decided to leave Saudi for the sake of her daughters. The book will attract attention of course because of the author's infamous brother-in-law, Osama (he was apparently a foreboding figure even as a young man) but it's more than a tragi-comic look into the Bin Laden home. This book is a clear eyed look at Saudi life. Carmen Bin Laden went to Saudi thinking that modernity would prevail and that in a few years Saudi women would have more rights. She was wrong then and things don't look any better now. Since Saudi Arabia is ostensibly an American ally taking an honest look at it makes sense. Can such a culture really change? Are we fools to it expect to? Inside the Kingdom is a very good book.I'm glad I bought it.
Rating:
Summary: ending was rushed
Review: I enjoyed this book and I value her courage to speak out against such a powerful clan and kingdom. However, while the first few chapters were extremely detailed, I felt that the ending (divorce from Yeslam) was rushed and quickly summed up. Given that this event was highly built up, she could have spent more time/detail on how the marriage separation worked out. It seemed like it was and is still a huge struggle, but we were spared the details.
Rating:
Summary: As Entertaining as it is Enlightening
Review: I expected a rather amateurish, light tale of broken fingernail problems and the like. What I got, instead, was a fascinating look at Saudi society by a semi-Muslim outsider. The fact that Carmen was Swiss/Iranian gave her a unique outlook on the situation. She was both sympathetic and repelled by the abysmal state of affairs in the "Kingdom" of Saud.
And what a kingdom it is with royal men having 50, 60 even 100 children by numerous wives, with women covered from head to foot, with "marriage ceremonies" in which a man is substitued for a bride. The place reads like an insane asylum. Just one example - when she demanded to go to the store, it was first emptied of all men so that they would not "see" another woman.
Her marriage, its failure and in particular, her daughters, are the core of the book. More and more she felt she could not subject her daughters to this non-treatment. And the hypocrisy was everywhere - when they met other Saudi couples in Europe, they dined and talked like "normal" people, yet once they were on holy ground the craziness began again.
Her insights into the ultra-orthodox brand of Wahabi Islam, peculiar to Saudi Arabia and now being exported abroad, was especially informative. By the way, all practicing Muslims are fundamentalists in that they accept the Quran without question. The events of 9-11 affected Saudi society deeply - it seemed to descend into even further primitivism with women - their existence ignored - devoting their lives to religious ideas in such a way as has not existed since the convents of Medieval Europe. Hatred of the Jews, the West, foreigners, infidels (other religions) - even shunning those who offer to help - are part for the course. In the end, Carment and her daughters find freedom. As she says, Saudi Arabia is simply the Taliban with money.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read for all women
Review: Normally I don't read biographies. Usually they focus on rags to riches stories that I can't relate to. This book was the exception.
This bio starts normally: boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl get married. But this is where the normality ends. Carmen marries into the Bin Ladin family,which back then were not synominous with terrorism. Carmen, who is foreign to Saudi life, is forced to live in isolation. She cannot come and go as she pleases without being completly veiled. She is forced to live in a world where women are property of the men; she is viewed as a foreigner by the other women because she was not born Saudi. Women,imagine going in a time machine from 2004 to the mid 19th century. At least that is the closest analogy I can think of.
This book made me appreciate the simple freedoms that we Americans take advantage of. I couldn't imagine living a life where I felt so powerless as a woman. I admire Carmen for being strong enough to get away from Saudi Arabia once and for all. Every female should read this book. It is an eye opener how far we women have come in America.
Rating: 
Summary: Oh, Please
Review: This book is about the author's marraige to a prominent Saudi who is one of the 29 brothers of Osama Bin Laden. The book chronicles the author's trials with being a Saudi wife.
Undoubtedly, Saudi Arabia is a dark world and not somewhere one would want to live. But, what kind of person would marry into such a world knowing what awaited her. It was at the point in the book where the author was relating that she had to put on one of those coverall chadors before exiting the plane on her first arrival into Saudi Arabia that I thought why am I reading about the life of someone who is obviously crazy. What could possibly cause soemone to do this ? It had to be that the author was doing it to gain access to the wealth of the Bin Laden family. Nothing else makes any sense at all. A little past that point I decided there were too many books written by worthwhile people to justify my spending any more time on this one. And, additionally, there isn't much to the book anyway that anyone with a passing familiarity with the horrors that are Saudia Arabia wouldn't already know aobut.
Rating: 
Summary: Inside an Angry Expatriate
Review: This is a valuable book for it's inside look at the Bin Laden family. It shows us how they worked and how they thought, kind of an emic anthropological approach. It should be read because there's simply nothing else out there that reveals this kind of information with this detail.
But the book was far too vindictive, especially towards a very quick ending. It reads like a divorced woman writing with her anger still intact, attempting to build a case for why the divorce happened and why she was not at fault. In retrospect, the entire book, even the happy years, are coloured with the perspective of divorce. Certainly, from the perspective presented, Carmen has a case for anger. But it is one side- and, I'd rather read a book on what it's like to live in the Bin Laden family, than a book on why Carmen's marriage failed.
Carmen expresses little love for the Saudi culture and little support for the people. It is almost an entirely negative portrayal. It seems like the story of a woman in extreme culture shock and culture stress who has never really recognized that she was in culture stress, or dealt with it. I live in a Muslim, Arab country. It's certainly not as restrictive as Saudi Arabia. But there is a lot I find to value in the culture here, though I am neither Muslim nor Arabic- and a lot I find valuable specifically in Islam and even strict Ikhwani Islam. Perhaps there is negatives in Saudi culture, as there is in every culture. If those are going to be pointed out, 1) it should be clear that this is an outsider perspective (which Carmen does), and 2) the positives should also be displayed. You can search through this book for a long time, and find nothing positive shared about Saudi culture. And after all, this is a culture God is involved with as well.
In these times, it is valuable to understand what it's like for Westerners to live in Saudi Arabia, and how the Bin Laden family works. This makes the book important to read. But read it with a large shaker of salt next on the table in front of you. You'll need to be pouring some on in nearly every page.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but not exactly shocking.
Review: This was definitely interesting and an easy read, so I recommend taking a look if you have a spare hour or so. It told me what I already know: life in Saudi Arabia sucks for women. It kind of pounded the point home though; I think Saudi Arabia is actually the worst of the worst as far as that goes, and they don't have the economic (though flimsy) and war excuse of Afghanistan or Iran. They have no excuse. The book disgusted me with that country even more than I had been to start with, and that's saying a lot. Ms. Bin Ladin, though, I didn't feel overwhelming sympathy for. She pretty much lived there by choice. She could have just stayed in Switzerland; they went there to visit every year. That she would allow her daughters to grow up in such an environment, never mind live there herself, astounds me, especially when it was, like I say, entirely by choice. Why did she stay? I'm not sure, and I don't feel like spectulating extensively, but I guess not being able to leave your house isn't as bad when your house includes a swimming pool and tennis courts. Being married to one of the richest men in the world surely helped. I think among other things she wasn't willing to give up the money. (At one point she discusses considering buying a dress for $60,000 - to wear once!) She was Muslim and her mother Iranian, so she wasn't as morally appalled at the situation as she might have been otherwise.
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