(no subject)
So I just spent about a week being very involved with Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11, and will have to spend more time with it soon, but in the meantime I would like to talk about it as a book rather than using it to talk about terrorism.
I would not have read The Looming Tower if it wasn't an assignment, and that is a shame! It is, in fact, very well and engagingly written. Wright gives it a novel-like structure for the most part that really helps propel it along, and he has some great turns of phrase. But even more, it is a very informative book. Wright begins with discussing how fundamentalism arose in the Middle East during the 20th century, and goes on to how certain fundamentalists mixed with historical events and ended up forming al-Qaeda, and how al-Qaeda turned into a terrorist organization. There's a particular emphasis early in the book on the political situation in Egypt, which is really interesting to read at this point, and the book ends up going over a good portion of the recent history of Afghanistan. About halfway through, it also becomes a spy/cop story, as Wright discusses the FBI and CIA's interest in bin Laden as al-Qaeda starts to escalate.
It's a necessary book in a lot of ways, not only for the detail but the way Wright uses the detail to tear down legends and preconceptions that have arisen since 9/11. Bin Laden isn't some evil mastermind here, he's an increasingly delusional leader with a greater history of failure than success. I particularly appreciate the constant references to how the thinking and methods of these fundamentalists is totally different from and frequently contrary to actual Islamic thought.
It is not always the most balanced book. The CIA, for example, comes off particularly badly. This is partly because they seriously messed up and partly because, as Wright mentions in the acknowledgements, he didn't really get to talk to the CIA the way he did the FBI. The result is that the FBI often come across as hard-working heros while the CIA is a faceless bureaucracy. And while the structure of the book is part of what makes it so readable, there is definitely a tendency there to arrange the facts in a way that makes a better story.
Still, the research is impressive (it did win a Pulitzer). There are pages of names listed as author interviews, it's kind of jaw-dropping. He pretty much did nothing but work on this book for years, and it shows. It's definitely worth a read as a very good examination of the creation of a lot of the forces at work in the world today.
I would not have read The Looming Tower if it wasn't an assignment, and that is a shame! It is, in fact, very well and engagingly written. Wright gives it a novel-like structure for the most part that really helps propel it along, and he has some great turns of phrase. But even more, it is a very informative book. Wright begins with discussing how fundamentalism arose in the Middle East during the 20th century, and goes on to how certain fundamentalists mixed with historical events and ended up forming al-Qaeda, and how al-Qaeda turned into a terrorist organization. There's a particular emphasis early in the book on the political situation in Egypt, which is really interesting to read at this point, and the book ends up going over a good portion of the recent history of Afghanistan. About halfway through, it also becomes a spy/cop story, as Wright discusses the FBI and CIA's interest in bin Laden as al-Qaeda starts to escalate.
It's a necessary book in a lot of ways, not only for the detail but the way Wright uses the detail to tear down legends and preconceptions that have arisen since 9/11. Bin Laden isn't some evil mastermind here, he's an increasingly delusional leader with a greater history of failure than success. I particularly appreciate the constant references to how the thinking and methods of these fundamentalists is totally different from and frequently contrary to actual Islamic thought.
It is not always the most balanced book. The CIA, for example, comes off particularly badly. This is partly because they seriously messed up and partly because, as Wright mentions in the acknowledgements, he didn't really get to talk to the CIA the way he did the FBI. The result is that the FBI often come across as hard-working heros while the CIA is a faceless bureaucracy. And while the structure of the book is part of what makes it so readable, there is definitely a tendency there to arrange the facts in a way that makes a better story.
Still, the research is impressive (it did win a Pulitzer). There are pages of names listed as author interviews, it's kind of jaw-dropping. He pretty much did nothing but work on this book for years, and it shows. It's definitely worth a read as a very good examination of the creation of a lot of the forces at work in the world today.