The Man Who Would Be King: Mohammed Bin Salman and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia
Lively and deeply sourced ... [You] will be entertained and instructed by this comprehensive overview of the kingdom and its leader ... Ms. House knows her subject well ... Ms. House compares MBS to the 17th-century Russian czar Peter the Great, and the comparison is apt ... Ms. House does not neglect to note the continuing limits on freedom of speech under MBS’s rule, and she does not minimize the human cost of the repression that still exists in the kingdom. But she also captures the joy of a younger generation now free to live something much closer to what their Western peers would recognize as a normal life ... Ms. House’s reporting on MBS’s views about his kingdom’s strategic challenges remains highly relevant ... Ms. House skillfully and insightfully depicts the paradox that drives MBS.
A well-crafted key to understanding a central player in world politics ... House, who has long had access to MBS, is generally admiring but far from uncritical.
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Former Wall Street Journal publisher House paints an uneven portrait of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince. The book comprises a series of thematic, at times repetitive essays that document how the sixth son of an elderly king radically changed the country in less than a decade ... House’s effusive descriptions of MBS...and firsthand accounts of his development projects...can be strikingly uncritical. This is especially jarring in combination with her coverage of imprisonments, disappearances, and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which she concludes was 'a rendition gone wrong.' House is at her most astute when she analyzes MBS’s position as a young man at the helm of an even younger country ... Still, this feels like a missed opportunity.
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