Christine's review
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
by Lawrence Wright
Christine's review
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
Christine's review
rating:
bookshelves:
2007
The Pulitzer Prize Winner for Nonfiction in 2007, Looming Tower is authored by the New Yorker's Lawrence Wright. The book focuses primarily on the rise of Bin Laden and Zawahiri, who Wright paints as the strategic operations behind Bin Laden's charisma and passion. Wright provides an exhaustive and well-written chronicle of the ups and downs in Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organization. Most interesting is the number of times the Al-Qaeda organization faced near extinction, only to rebound with enough strength to continue on. In the last third of the book, Wright turns his attention to the U.S. intelligence that ultimately failed to understand the strength, sophistication and determination of Al-Qaeda forces. In particular, Wright provides an engrossing account of Al-Qaeda's operations starting with the East African embassy bombings and culminating with 9/11, including an account of the FBI case agent who was able to obtain the names of all 19 hijackers during an interrogation of one of Al-Qa...more
