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 Cover of the first US edition | |
| Author | Lawrence Wright |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Chip Kidd (designer) |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf (US) |
Publication date | 2006 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 480 |
| ISBN | 978-0-375-41486-2 |
| OCLC | 64592193 |
| 973.931 22 | |
| LC Class | HV6432.7 .W75 2006 |
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 is a 2006 nonfiction book byLawrence Wright. Wright examines the origins of the militant organizationAl-Qaeda, the background for various terrorist attacks and how they were investigated, and the events that led to theSeptember 11 attacks.[1][2]
The book was aNew York Times best-seller and won a number of awards, including thePulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Aten-episode television miniseries adaptation aired in 2018 onHulu.
The Looming Tower is largely focused on the people who conspired to commit theSeptember 11 attacks, their motives and personalities, and how they interacted. The book starts withSayyid Qutb, anEgyptian religious scholar who visited the United States in the late 1940s and returned to his home to become an anti-WestIslamist and eventually a martyr for his beliefs. There is also a portrait ofAyman al-Zawahiri—from his childhood in Egypt, to his participation in and later leadership ofEgyptian Islamic Jihad, to his merging of his organization with Al Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden is the person described the most, from his childhood inSaudi Arabia in a rich family to his participation in thejihad against theSoviet Union inAfghanistan, his role as a financier of terrorist groups, his stay inSudan, his return to Afghanistan, and his interactions with theTaliban. The1998 United States embassy bombings inDar es Salaam,Tanzania, andNairobi,Kenya are described, as is thebombing of the USSCole in 2000.
Lawrence Wright also describes in detail some of the Americans involved in counter-terrorism, in particularRichard A. Clarke, chief counter-terrorism adviser on theU.S. National Security Council;Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA's counterterroristAlec Station; andJohn P. O'Neill, an assistant deputy director of investigation for theFBI, who served as America's top bin Laden hunter until his retirement from the FBI in August 2001, after which he worked as head of security at theWorld Trade Center, where he died in the 9/11 attacks.
The book also describes some of the problems associated with the lack of cooperation between the FBI, theCIA, and other U.S. government organizations that prevented them from uncovering the 9/11 plot in time.
BecauseThe Looming Tower is to a large extent focused on telling the story of the people involved, it does not describe the 9/11 plot and its execution in much detail. It focuses more on the background and the conditions that produced the people who planned and staged the attack and on information about those who were combating terror against the United States.
A ten-episode television miniseries based on the book began airing onHulu February 28, 2018. The cast includesAlec Baldwin as CIA directorGeorge Tenet,Jeff Daniels asJohn O’Neill,Tahar Rahim asAli Soufan, andPeter Sarsgaard as the fictional CIA analyst Martin Schmidt, based onMichael Scheuer.[17][18]
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