The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
For most Americans, al Qaeda began to exist on September 11, 2001. Since then, we've been frantically piecing together shards of information about this secretive extremist movement. But connecting the dots isn't always easy. Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower translates data into meaning by...
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For most Americans, al Qaeda began to exist on September 11, 2001. Since then, we've been frantically piecing together shards of information about this secretive extremist movement. But connecting the dots isn't always easy. Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower translates data into meaning by tracing the rise of the group through the lives of four men: two terrorists and two men who tracked them. Wright explores the complex relationship of the bin Laden family and Saudi Arabia's royal family. Perhaps even more significantly, he reveals the agency insularity that almost certainly prevented the thwarting of the 9/11 plot.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780375414862 (037541486X)
ASIN: 037541486X
Publish date: August 8th 2006
Publisher: Knopf
Pages no: 421
Edition language: English
So, did this account of the long wind-up to 9/11 “read like fiction,” as one of the blurbs proclaims? Well, there was a plot and strong narrative. There was intrigue. Far-flung settings, yes, and a list of characters long enough to rival "War and Peace." But at the same time, as engaging as it was, ...
A wonderful book, a must read. Every now and then I come in contact with a book that is the product of an incredibly impressive amount of research, conducted with diligence and perseverance over an extended period of time, written by a person with an astonishingly encyclopedic grasp of important ev...
A 3.75 and I'd possibly have liked it more had I not read it over such an elongated time. I was so fed up by still reading this book after so long I got a little bitter.
Excellent. The Looming Tower is an excellent narrative history of the events leading up to the September 11th terror attacks and will hopefully be required reading for any course on the subject. I had no idea how many knowledge gaps that I had about Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden and the U.S.' activities in...
Well, I finally found my notes and got this review finished - long overdue.For all the energy, lives and treasure we have devoted to Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s important to remember that they had nothing to do with 9/11 which became the excuse for our actions rather than the proximate rationale. We ...
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