O.B.L.(The Talk of the Town)(Osama bin Laden)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 22-AUG-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Bruce Lawrence, a professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, lives near Durham, North Carolina, with his wife, Miriam Cooke, a scholar of modern Arabic literature. "Our house is on a hill, and we have a guesthouse-library that we use as a retreat," he said the other day. "We sit up there a couple of nights a week, and we meditate and sometimes we read poetry aloud. I'll say, 'Let's read some of what we're working on,' and then I'll read some of the stuff from O.B.L.' "

By "O.B.L.," Lawrence means Osama bin Laden. By "stuff," he means bin Laden's speeches, interviews, and statements. Lawrence, a respected Arabist, has agreed, at the request of Verso Books, to edit and write an introduction to "Messages to the...

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