Book of the week: Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden From 9/11 to Abbottabad by Peter L. Bergen

(Crown, $26)

A year has passed since the dramatic conclusion of “the most intensive and expensive manhunt of all time,” said Jason Burke in The Guardian (U.K.). With a “pacy and authoritative” account of the years and days leading to the May 2011 Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound, CNN analyst Peter Bergen adds much new detail to a story that has begged for it. Reaching back into the 1990s, Bergen first shows how sexism inside the CIA played a role in preventing agency higher-ups from heeding the warnings about bin Laden sounded by certain female officers. The narrative, already strong, “moves up a gear” when the team trying to hunt him down shifted tactics a few years ago and started trying to locate the terror leader by identifying his couriers. “This new approach was critical.”

Bergen’s book is “packed” with instructive color, said The Economist. The author, who’s been an out-front voice on al Qaida since he interviewed bin Laden on camera in 1997, this time gained access to the Abbottabad compound when it still looked like a crime scene. “Much of bin Laden’s life seems to have been tediously suburban” during his several years there. To help keep his three wives satisfied, bin Laden apparently drank Avena syrup, a kind of organic Viagra. He also used Just for Men to blacken his hair. Money was scarce, barely enough to pay staff. “The household of 11 adults plus children subsisted on two goats a week,” plus Quaker Oats, and honey from the garden. Nearby, American spies watched for months. Led to the house by a Kuwaiti man they believed to be a courier, they never could determine with certainty the identity of a tall figure who paced endlessly under a tarpaulin roof in the garden.

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Bin Laden’s years in isolation took a toll on his mind, said Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times. A few of his later terror schemes come across as plain nutty, though Bergen reports he was astute enough to realize that his global terror network required a brand relaunch. Bergen’s recap of the raid makes especially good use of new sources. After the U.S. helicopters landed, bin Laden apparently spent 15 minutes just lying in bed in the dark. He had written once that he expected to die as a martyr in the mountains, “amongst perched eagles.” Now he turned to one of his wives and said, “Don’t turn on the light.” Those would be his last words.