The looming tower : Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11

Resource Information

The work The looming tower : Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11 represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Culver-Union Township Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

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Label

The looming tower : Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11

Title remainder

Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11

Statement of responsibility

Lawrence Wright

Creator

• Wright, Lawrence, 1947-
• trueWright, Lawrence, 1947-

Subject

• trueAntiterrorist policy -- United States
• Intelligence service -- United States
• trueIntelligence service -- United States
• trueIslam
• trueMilitants
• Qaida (Organization)
• trueQaida (Organization)
• trueRadicalism
• trueSeptember 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001
• September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001
• Terrorism -- Government policy -- United States
• trueTerrorism -- History -- 20th century
• trueBooks to TV
• trueHistory writing -- United States -- September 11, 2001

Genre

• trueBooks to TV
• trueHistory writing

Language

eng

Summary

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

Writing style

• trueRichly detailed
• trueCompelling
• trueComprehensive

Award

• Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, 2007.
• Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, 2006.
• J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, 2007.
• Lionel Gelber Prize (Canada), 2007.
• New York Times Notable Book, 2006

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

973.931

Illustrations

• illustrations
• maps
• plates

Index

index present

LC call number

HV6432.7

LC item number

.W75 2006

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Target audience

adult