The Looming Tower: Al-Qaida's Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaida's Road to 9/11 is the culmination of five years of research
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Monday, 11, Sep 2006 09:09
Published by Penguin (Allen Lane), out now, hardback, 373pp, £20.00.
In a nutshell.
Gripping, thought-provoking, powerful, terrifying, sprawling.
What's it all about?
The plot is well known, as are the characters, but journalist Lawrence Wright has spent five years of his life researching this new take on the development of al-Qaida from a fledging set of shared desires to the most feared terror network in the world. Drawing from his own interviews with the key figures and accounts of others, he takes the history of al-Qaida further back than ever before.
The seeds were found by the pre-eminent Egyptian Islamic scholar Sayyid Qutb during a stay in an America he hated in the 1940s, sewn by a young jihadist called Ayman al-Zawahiri and nurtured by one Osama bin Laden - the son of a powerful Saudi construction magnate who turned to terror in his youth.
Wright also weaves into his narrative the role of John O'Neill, an FBI agent who seemingly warned of the possibility of September 11th well before anyone was concerned enough about global terrorism to listen. The irony that he was to die that day in New York is one not overlooked.
The book starts with the very beginnings of the Islamic terror movement and ends with Bin Laden and his cohorts disappearing into the Afghan wilderness, but the story goes on.
Who's it by?
Lawrence Wright is a reporter with the New Yorker magazine, where a section of this book was published which won him the 2002 Overseas Press Club's Ed Cunningham Award for magazine writing. He has also written six other books, including the well-received Twins and Remembering Satan - scientific studies on twins and 'recovered memories' respectively. Wright is also a successful screenwriter and collaborated with Ed Zwick to write the 1998 Denzel Washington movie, Siege.
As an example.
[From the pre-terrorism years] "Osama enjoyed television, especially westerns. Bonanza was his favourite show, and he adored Fury, a series about a boy and his silky black stallion..but his mind was always somewhere else."
Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster
September 11th movies are ten a penny at the moment as the fifth anniversary of the event that led to the deaths of almost 3,000 people passes. Films such as United 93 and Oliver Stone's World Trade Center have met with critical acclaim for their portrayals of the various events of that fateful day. But the wounds are surely still too raw, and the story still too unfolding, for the complete history of al-Qaida to be made into a film quite yet.
What the others say
"What a riveting tale Lawrence Wright fashions in this marvellous book. The Looming Tower is not just a detailed, heart-stopping account of the events leading up to 9/11, written with style and verve. [It's] a thoughtful examination of the world that produced the men who brought us 9/11, and of their progeny who bedevil us today." - Dexter Filkins, The New York Times Book Review
"As its subtitle implies, Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaida and the Road to 9/11 doesn't deal with the place that 9/11 has come to occupy in our consciousness or in our politics. But Mr Wright's gripping, lucid narrative suggests at least one thing remains unchanged in American life: the belief that it can't happen here." - Charles Taylor, New York Observer
"A reader who has no prior knowledge of al-Qaida will get an adequate summary of the research amassed so far, despite the blunt, thriller-like writing, which at times makes recreated scenes seem implausible." - The Metro
So is it any good?
Wright achieves an impressive feat in drawing together the various different strands that make al-Qaida. His historical narrative is clear and concise and leaves the reader with a more complete idea of what is inevitably a complex story within a story. His reporters' instincts make for an authoritative voice throughout and his use of quotes from the people involved from various testimonies and speeches add credence to what could otherwise be perceived as a collection of surmises and guestimates. Does he add anything new? Well, perhaps not a great deal. But this is one of the most comprehensive analyses of a subject that affects us all and yet few people can honestly say they know much about.
There is a passivity and distinct lack of moralising in this book that adds to his power. Wright does not seek to castigate Bin Laden or any of the individual Islamists but lets the facts speak for themselves. Indeed, what this book does is take the Bin Ladens of this world out of the fantastical domain and bring them back down to what they truly are - individuals with emotions whose vision of the world has changed over time and been altered by the course of events. There has been a danger as the vocabulary of the War on Terror becomes all-consuming to forget that those key proponents of terrorism are human and not otherworldly characters from some nightmare. Indeed the 21st century cult of celebrity has enveloped Bin Laden and co in ways that can only add to the fear he and his network are able to perpetuate. This book redresses the balance somewhat by personalising the characters and making the forces that drive them that bit more fathomable.
Wright raises important questions about the role the US security services had in failing to act on the signs in the lead-up to September 11th, with the FBI and CIA often made to look at best fallible and at worse inept. Again, these are not new criticisms and are still open to debate, but come at a time when such concerns are inevitably rising to the surface once more.
Terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism are constants in our world today and there appears little sign of that changing anytime soon. Despite this, the majority know little about how this state of affairs has come about. Wright has more answers than most to such questions and we could all do a lot worse that listen to what he has to say.
7/10
Martin Ashplant