As the world waits for answers about Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance, we asked our international correspondent David Kirkpatrick, who wrote “Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East,” to suggest three books to help us understand Saudi Arabia and United States relations with that country. Here are his recommendations.

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THE KINGDOM

Arabia and the House of Sa’ud

By Robert Lacey

630 pp. Hutchinson. (1981)

Kirkpatrick calls this book a “readable history” of how Saudi Arabia was formed in the early 1900s by a man named Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd ar-Rahman ibn Faisal al-Saud (often known in the West as Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud), who reclaimed power over the region after his family had lost it in the 1700s. Lacey, who is a friend of Khashoggi’s, the disappeared journalist, threads together the story of how Abd al-Aziz built a kingdom “with a sword of steel and a sword of flesh,” taking advantage of his right to have four wives at a time to marry around 300 women and father dozens of sons. “He used marriage as a diplomatic instrument, making his own bed the focus of efforts to bind the territories he conquered,” wrote our reviewer.

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KINGS AND PRESIDENTS

Saudi Arabia and the United States Since FDR

By Bruce Riedel

272 pp. Brookings Institution Press. (2017)