The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Unabridged) The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Unabridged)

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Unabridged‪)‬

    • 4.3 • 83 Ratings
    • $19.99

    • $19.99

Publisher Description

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.

Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws all elements of the story into a galvanizing narrative that adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at September 11, 2001. The richness of its new information, and the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely and effectively with the continuing terrorist threat.

GENRE
Nonfiction
NARRATOR
LW
Lawrence Wright
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
16:31
hr min
RELEASED
2017
May 16
PUBLISHER
Random House Audio
SIZE
1
GB

Customer Reviews

Styopa ,

Narration!

For the love of God, would you authors please stop narrating your own audio books!?! Mr. Wright has produced an excellent nonfiction assembly of fascination facts regarding history and events leading up to the 9/11 attacks. However, his abysmal narration prevents me from going any farther with it. I had to buy a hardcopy instead in order to continue following the story.

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