The Terror Years

June 27, 2016
Suffering, violence, and tense intrigue run through these dispatches from the frontlines of the “war on terror,” culled from the author’s New Yorker articles. Pulitzer-winning journalist Wright (Thirteen Days in September) investigates every facet of the shadowy conflict, including Washington officialdom, terrorist cells, and the lives and deaths of the war’s victims, from Syria to lower Manhattan. The pieces include profiles of al-Qaeda mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri as his militancy is forged under torture in Egyptian prisons; FBI counterterrorism agent Ali Soufan, who used sympathy and cagey questioning rather than waterboarding to get information; and Egyptian Islamist Dr. Fadl (as he’s commonly known), a leading theorist of jihad who renounced violence in 2008. Quieter but equally searching pieces explore the plight of Syrian filmmakers walking a tightrope between expression and government co-optation; the author’s experience training journalists in Saudi Arabia, where they are stifled by theocratic dictatorship; and the heartbreak of families of five American hostages held by ISIS. Wright mixes engrossing procedural writing on organizing and fighting terrorism with vivid firsthand reportage. (Surveying veiled Saudi women, he writes, “It felt to me that all the women had died, and only their shades remained.”) He writes with empathy for every side while clearly registering the moral catastrophes that darken this pitiless struggle. Agent: Andew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

March 15, 2016

What's happened in the Middle East since the emergence of al-Qaeda in the 1990s? Reprinting ten of his pieces first published in The New Yorker, staff writer Wright offers a fierce and informative trajectory of recent developments. The pieces range widely from religious rigidity in Saudi Arabia to Syrian films, which have reflected the barely suppressed anger that led to civil war. Two of Wright's last three books--Going Clear and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower--were New York Times best sellers, and all three, including Thirteen Days in September, received front-page coverage in the New York Times Book Review. So great expectations are justified. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2016

Pulitzer Prize winner Wright (staff writer, The New Yorker; The Looming Tower), in this collection of riveting pieces first published in The New Yorker, traces the path of terror from al-Qaeda to the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). The book is based on the author's astute observations on many facets of the terror network in the Arab Middle East. Wright describes how al-Qaeda's philosophy spread and morphed into the ideology and practices of ISIS today. In the chapter "The Kingdom of Silence," the author provides a fascinating account of Saudi society and government. This is important because the Saudi regime and its myriad formal and informal institutions have been the incubator and propagator of an ideology that has sustained many of the current terrorist movements in the Middle East. The American angle is covered through the profiles of two FBI agents and a CIA station chief. The work concludes with a description of the capture and beheadings of four American journalists and aid workers by ISIS. VERDICT This informative book will appeal to all readers interested in the genesis and development of terrorist movements. [See Prepub Alert, 2/29/16.]--Nader Entessar, Univ. of South Alabama, Mobile

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.