Journalist and author Peter Bergen did a television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, a piece that served, for many in the West, as an introduction to bin Laden. To write this book, Bergen interviewed more than 50 people who knew bin Laden personally, including "everyone from his brother-in-law to his high school English teacher to former members of al Qaeda." In reviewing this book for The Washington Post, former counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke wrote that although the accounts of bin Laden "are often self-serving and may be inaccurate, they still produce a far more detailed picture of bin Laden than the one that emerges from more conventional biographies."
