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Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
Knopf
August 2006
480 pages
ISBN: 037541486X
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Political
A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11,
a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist
plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated
in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright�s remarkable book
is based on five years of research and hundreds of
interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany,
Spain, and the United States. The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of
intimacy and insight by telling the story through the
interweaving lives of four men: the two leaders of al-Qaeda,
Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri; the FBI�s
counterterrorism chief, John O�Neill; and the former head of
Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal. As these lives unfold, we see revealed: the crosscurrents of
modern Islam that helped to radicalize Zawahiri and bin
Laden . . . the birth of al-Qaeda and its unsteady
development into an organization capable of the American
embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the
USS Cole . . . O�Neill�s heroic efforts to track al-Qaeda
before 9/11, and his tragic death in the World Trade towers
. . . Prince Turki�s transformation from bin Laden�s ally to
his enemy . . . the failures of the FBI, CIA, and NSA to
share intelligence that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks. The Looming Tower broadens and deepens our knowledge of
these signal events by taking us behind the scenes. Here is
Sayyid Qutb, founder of the modern Islamist movement, lonely
and despairing as he meets Western culture up close in 1940s
America; the privileged childhoods of bin Laden and
Zawahiri; family life in the al-Qaeda compounds of Sudan and
Afghanistan; O�Neill�s high-wire act in balancing his
all-consuming career with his equally entangling personal
life�he was living with three women, each of them unaware of
the others� existence�and the nitty-gritty of turf battles
among U.S. intelligence agencies. Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws
all elements of the story into a galvanizing narrative that
adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at
September 11, 2001. The richness of its new information, and
the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely
and effectively with the continuing terrorist threat.
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