Short answer is: we're still waiting for history to be written about bin Laden. The fact is, he was so polarising a figure that most interpretations of his philosophy and motives are distorted by either politics or plain old Orientalism.

But while we wait for the professional scholarship to catch up, I'd suggest looking at Osama bin Laden by Michael Scheuer — the author was a CIA analyst and the head of the agency's bin Laden unit in the late 1990s.

Scheuer is regarded as one of the world's foremost experts on bin Laden and al-Qaeda, though he's not a professional historian and he's not uncontroversial or without his biases; his recent public profile has been as a vocal critic of neoconservative foreign policy.

In that vein, the book is framed as a counterpoint to the traditional, simplistic Western narrative about bin Laden and militant Islamism. Critics have generally seemed to regard it as a flawed but nonetheless very valuable text — I haven't finished it myself, but it seems like a pretty well-reasoned and sophisticated analysis so far.

Not a bio of Osama exactly, but I ant recommend highly enough "Ghost Wars" which is about Afghanistan up until sept 10th.

Given that his most known acts and his death are both within the last 20 years, I'm not sure this sub is the place to ask that question.