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highly recommended |
Great insight into Al-Qaeda and 9/11 
This is a great book for anyone wondering where Al-Qaeda came from and the events that brought us to such a terrible attack on U.S. soil. Great narrative of the early days of radical Islam as well as the events that lead to 9-11. Insight given on the CIA and U.S. side as well as the Al-Qaeda side.
I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the history of Al-Qaeda and a recent historical look at how this whole mess we are in today came about.
Get inside Osama's head 
While this work is a bit didactic, Wright lays out the logic and planning of the September 11 attacks as a part of a greater plan to purify Islam. He explains the origins of this movement from the Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt, and differentiates the international role of al Qaeda (if only President Bush had asked Karen Hughes to read this book and give him an executive summary). The Looming Tower is a must read for every Westerner who plans to go out in public, and for every Muslim who is not ultra devout and loyal to OBL. Once you read it you'll understand the thinking of another religious zealot, Jeremiah Wright (no relation to the author). And you'll understand why the war on terrorism will be waged indefinitely.
The History of 9/11
In this superbly written book, Lawrence Wright tackles the still controversial subject of how 9/11 happened tact and aplomb. Rather than appealing to extremists on any side of the debate, Wright provides a remarkably in-depth history of how al-Qaeda came into being, and of U.S. policies during and after the Afghan war to kick out the Soviets.
On the al-Qaeda side of the story, Wright begins with the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb and very clearly traces the evolution of militant Islam all the way up to bin Laden and Zawahiri. Qutb's impact on figures like Zawahiri and other Islamists cannot be underestimated, so it is to Wright's credit that he includes a chapter on Qutb. Wright also provides a detailed account of bin Laden's history, from his days in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Sudan. Included in this account, Wright reveals that at one point, bin Laden actually suggested an alliance with Shi'ite Muslims to fight the Soviets. Another interesting bit of information found in the book is the meetings between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda during the late 1990s, and the Iraqi offer to relocate al-Qaeda to Iraq.
Wright also explains 9/11 from the American failure to stop it. This story primarily involves the lack of communication among the CIA, FBI, and NSA. It's no less than chilling to see just how many times 9/11 might have been prevented had it not been for the turf wars between these agencies. If bin Laden is the main antagonist of this story, FBI agent John O'Neil. Even though I consider myself well-read on the subject, I had never heard of O'Neil before. He spent the last decade of his career trying to get bin Laden, and then tragically died trying to rescue people from the World Trade Center.
I've read many fantastic books over the past five years that deal with the U.S. and the Middle East, but Wright's book is really close to the top of my list. I would recommend this book to just about anyone, regardless of their prior knowledge. I think the book's greatest strength is that Wright managed to take an enormously complex subject and make it accessible to the general public, who is still woefully ignorant about American foreign policy and the Middle East in general.
Unlocking al-Qaeda's Conspiracy Of Hate
One of many disturbing, ironic tales Lawrence Wright shares about the evolution of Islamic terrorism in his 2006 book "The Looming Tower" is about the day Ramzi Yousef, the man who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, was finally brought to trial. Arriving by helicopter, he was nudged by a guard who pointed out the Twin Towers against the Manhattan skyline.
"You see, it's still standing," the guard said with a nudge.
"It wouldn't be if we had had more money," Yousef replied.
Osama bin Laden, as it turned out, had that money, Saudi petrodollars funneled through his father's vast contracting empire. He also had zealotry, vision, and charisma to unite a disparate group of fundamentalists and nihilists and set them on a course that would knock down the towers and usher in an Age of Terror like no other in history.
Wright's book, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is a suspenseful and riveting read despite the handicap of subject matter that makes for thoroughly depressing reading toward a conclusion everyone on the planet knows going in. He puts 9/11 in perspective, not an easy thing to do, by showing bin Laden's antecedents in the last century and revealing the organization's weaknesses as well as strengths.
Cut off from his wealthy family, bin Laden struggled to pay for basic necessities during the mid-1990s, hardly the Bondian supervillain once imagined. His followers were confused, often disenchanted by his killjoy attitudes toward everything from music ("The flute of the devil") to air-conditioning. He even struggled with the moral question of terrorism, though his monochromatic worldview didn't leave him wrestling for long.
"The confrontation that we are calling for with the apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates...Platonic ideals...nor Aristotelian diplomacy," read the al-Queda manual "Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants". "But it does know the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine gun."
To make 9/11 happen, bin Laden needed help, not only from fellow zealots like Egyptian radical Ayman al-Zawahiri and Afghan Taliban leader Mohummad Omar, who paved the way for his own regime's downfall by hosting and insanely abetting al-Queda until the bitter end. He also got sizable support from intelligence agents like those at the CIA, who had 9/11 in their sights but refused to share their information with the FBI's counterterrorist boss John O'Neill, who knew what was afoot and only needed the CIA's help to take the necessary action.
In writing about O'Neill, who exhausted by in-fighting, went to work at the World Trade Center and died in the ensuing carnage, Wright's book answers the challenge posed by some who would award al-Queda the monopoly on bravery in this savage fight. Yet even O'Neill helped al-Queda in a way, by being such a polarizing figure in the Bureau that others found him all-too-easy to discount.
Not everything about this book sits right with me. He's too easy on Richard Clarke, the White House counterterrorism czar who passed up many chances to kill bin Laden, and offers some tortured Freudian analysis suggesting that the root of Islamic terrorism is tied to female sexuality (bin Laden may be repressive, but he's also been married five times).
There are no easy answers in the end, just piercing questions, which Wright lays out in a compelling, crystalline fashion. You may not want to pick up "The Looming Tower", but if you do, you'll have as hard a time putting it down.
reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
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based on 285 reviews
