Politics and Society in Saudi Arabia

'The reasons Saudi Arabia became the authoritarian US client state we know today ... is the subject of Sarah Yizraeli's revelatory new study. Yizraeli has managed to penetrate Saudi society from afar in ways that have eluded journalists and scholars with more direct access. Although she is apparently barred from entering Saudi Arabia as an Israeli citizen, she has long had a following among specialists for her mastery of obscure Saudi and international source material. Significantly, she focuses not on the much-studied decades since 1979 but on the largely neglected preceding era. Intricate in its accumulation of detail and nuance, the story Yizraeli tells is nevertheless stark in its conclusions.' - New York Review of Books 'Yizraeli's tour de force deftly illustrates how the complex interplay between the royal family, Aramco, the US government, and the religious establishment directly affected the course of Saudi development. She gives the reader what amounts to an insider's view - though she is far from one. This is a shining example of what judicious scholarship can do.' - Joshua Teitelbaum, Professor of Middle Eastern History, Bar-Ilan University, and author of Political Liberalization in the Persian Gulf. 'a very useful examination of an important period in Saudi history ... Recommended.' - Choice