title: Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
author:  Robert Lacey 
description: Robert Lacey is a British journalist and the author of the bestselling books <i>The Kingdom</i>, <i>Majesty</i>, and <i>Ford: The Men and the Machine</i>. For the past three years he has split his time between Saudi Arabia and London to research this book.
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  Vision or Mirage
  
    
    
    
    
    
  
   _This book is dedicated to the ladies in my life—Virginia, Yin, and Caroline
  Rundell—who have each contributed to it more than they may realize._
  
    
    
  
  > Whenever I landed in Jeddah or Riyadh and wanted to discover what was
  > _really_ going on, the ‘man-in-the-sand’ whose expertise I always sought out
  > first was David Rundell, the Quiet American who had the ‘inside scoop’ on
  > politics, business and, above all, the people of the Kingdom. Dave was
  > always just back from some oasis or tribe or border territory where secret
  > things were happening, or heading for the desert to pow-wow with the king.
  > His brilliant book generously discloses a lifetime of wisdom and insights
  > that take the reader inside one of the world’s most enigmatic and crucially
  > important of lands. Saudi Arabia? It’s all in here …
  
  > > >  **Robert Lacey,** author of _The Kingdom_ and _Inside the Kingdom._
  
  > The author of this book is ‘pro-Saudi’, and at the same time he i