Rent: The Saudis: Inside the Desert Kingdom

By Sandra Mackey

Overview & Description

Sandra Mackey lived in Saudi Arabia for four years, and as far as the authorities knew, she was simply the wife of an American doctor. But she saw things and traveled to places rarely viewed by any outsider, let alone a Western woman, and she succeeded in smuggling out a series of crucial articles on Saudi culture and politics.

The Saudis offers a fascinating portrait of Saudi life, chronicling Mackey's extraordinary travels and experiences and depicting Saudi Arabia's strange metamorphosis from backward desert kingdom to world power. Mackey reveals the chaos of a country in transformation: grappling with modernity, coming to terms with its own wealth, and battling to maintain an influential stance in an altogether new world. This updated edition provides the essential background to the new Saudi crisis as the mother state of international terrorism.

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Book Details

ISBN 10: 0393324176
ISBN 13: 9780393324174
480 pages.
First Published:9/1/1988
List Price:16.95
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Categories this title is in
History, Nonfiction, All Categories, Algeria, Politics

Reviews:

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Paul P. writes,

I found this book very outdated. Having lived in Saudi I can see her one-sided view of the Kingdom as viewed from inside a western coumpound. I have read many books on Saudi and the Middle east. The best by far is Paramedic to the Prince by Patrick Notestine. Just came out in march 2007. He spent over ten years in the Kingdom and gives you his view from all levels of Saudi society. From the bedioun camps to the Royal Palace. I gave that one a five stars.

Susan P. writes,

Referring to the older version of the book: As a trained Political Scientist who worked in the area of economic planning part of the time she was in Saudi Arabia, the author does a very nice job of exploring the real crisis of inflexible Saudi traditionalism when first really confronted with the demands of modernity -- the weird mix of naivete, arrogance, and fear. We can see the reverberations still.

She's actually a lot less biased and more even-handed than a lot of newer books, and it's extremely readable and entertaining as well as informative. She touches on more aspects of Saudi lifestyle in one book than all of the half-dozen other books I've read combined -- urban and rural development, health care, economics, religion, education, sexuality, social psychology, and domestic and foreign politics. She is best as a political scientist-sociologist, OK as an anthropologist, and weaker as a social psychologist -- but even there, not bad.

This is a solid and fairly comprehensive foundation for understanding how modern Saudi Arabia came to be as it is, but it is not the place to stop.

Jason P. writes,

I did not like this book very much. The author treats her subjects as if they were some sort of cockroach species under her idealistic American microscope. It is more accurate to say that this book is an account of how expatriates "survive" in KSA and not a true representation of the nation or its people. It is full of supercilious generalizations and patronizing commentary. It fully conforms to the biased view of Muslim nations presented in the Western media. I know many Saudis and they are nothing like the examples presented in this book. To the contrary, they are some of the most hospitable and genuine people I have come accross. If you want the "Fox News" version of Saudi, by all means read this book.