The Base : In Search of Al-Qaeda

By Jane Corbin

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743449428
• ISBN13: 9780743449427
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Know thy Enemy - What motivates Osama Bin Laden?

Jane Corbin is an award winning senior reporter working for the English news channel BBC. She has spent the last years studying the growth of terror movements, particularly in the Middle East. `The Base' takes you inside the world of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and it is a fascinating read. An enormous strength of this book is Corbin's in-depth knowledge of her subject matter. She has been studying bin Laden's organization for four years, and was familiar with bin Laden and al-Qaeda long before 9/11. The Author has followed in bin Laden's footsteps through the Middle East, Africa, Europe and America. Corbin uses her extensive range of sources, including her own experiences, to draw a remarkable portrait of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization. She carefully examine how they carried out the attacks, including the synchronized bombings of the two US Embassies in Africa, the U.S.S. Cole attack in Yemen, and the recent attacks in America, using four commercial airliners to target the Twin towers and Pentagon. `The Base' gave me a good insight into the al-Qaeda organization, bin Laden's dynasty, the culture and thoughts of those in the Middle East. This book also gave me a better appreciation of just *how* extensive al-Qaeda and bin Laden's reach is and it broaden my understanding of the sheer complexity of the war on terrorism. `The Base' came highly recommended by a friend (Thanks Greg!). I read this book after reading `Longitudes and Attitudes' (Friedman) and `Holy War Inc. (Bergen). I finished off my 9/11 period with Giuliani's `Leadership'. These four books compliment each other, and reading them gave me a much broader, deeper understanding of the complexity of the problem(s) we are facing.