The American journalist Sandra Mackey was known in the 1980s for her book on how the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia changed from a desert unknown to many into one of the major powers influencing the fate of the world. McKay lived in Saudi Arabia for four years in which she dealt with the authorities there as the peaceful wife of an American diplomat. The end product was a book called “The Saudis,” in which she announced that she was able to penetrate to the core of the “desert kingdom,” as she called it, and she was able to reach “where no Westerner could have reached.”