The Terror Years
From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State
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Publisher Description
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Looming Tower—and “one of the most lucid writers on the subject of Islamic extremism” (The New York Review of Books)—come ten powerful investigative pieces, an essential primer on jihadist movements in the Middle East and the attempts of the West to contain them.
In these pages, Lawrence Wright examines al-Qaeda as it experiences a rebellion from within and spins off a growing web of worldwide terror. He shows us the Syrian film industry before the civil war—compliant at the edges but already exuding a barely masked fury. He gives us the heart-wrenching story of American children kidnapped by ISIS—and Atlantic publisher David Bradley’s efforts to secure their release. And he details the roles of key FBI figures John O’Neill and his talented protégé Ali Soufan in fighting terrorism. In a moving epilogue, Wright shares his predictions for the future. Rigorous, clear-eyed, and compassionate, The Terror Years illuminates the complex human players on all sides of a devastating conflict. These essays were first published in The New Yorker.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
