A short life of the author
Lawrence Wright (born 2 August 1947 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) is an American journalist, author, screenwriter, and playwright who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992 and who is one of the most accomplished investigative journalists working in the United States. His books on terrorism, Scientology, the Middle East, and Texas have established him as a writer of exceptional range, depth, and narrative skill.
The Looming Tower (2006)
Wright’s masterwork is a comprehensive, deeply reported account of the rise of al-Qaeda and the road to the September 11, 2001, attacks. The book traces the story from the Egyptian radical Sayyid Qutb in the 1940s through Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the FBI counterterrorism agent John O’Neill, weaving together the disparate threads of Islamic radicalism, American intelligence failures, and bureaucratic rivalry between the FBI and the CIA that allowed the attacks to succeed.
The book is based on more than five hundred interviews conducted over five years and is remarkable for its narrative clarity — Wright manages to make an enormously complex story comprehensible and compelling without oversimplifying it. It won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2007 and was adapted into a Hulu television series in 2018.
Going Clear (2013)
Wright’s investigation of the Church of Scientology — Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief — is one of the most thorough and most damaging exposés of the organisation ever published. The book traces Scientology from the troubled life of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, through its evolution into a powerful, litigious, and deeply controversial institution, focusing particularly on its relationship with Hollywood and its treatment of members who dissent.
The book was the subject of an HBO documentary directed by Alex Gibney (2015) and provoked furious responses from the Church of Scientology, which attempted to discredit Wright and his sources.
The End of October (2020)
Wright’s first novel — a pandemic thriller about a deadly influenza virus that originates in an Indonesian refugee camp and spreads across the world — was published in April 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating the globe. The novel’s prescience was eerie: Wright had spent years researching pandemic preparedness for both fiction and nonfiction purposes, and the book’s depiction of societal breakdown, political paralysis, and public health failures tracked disturbingly close to reality.
God Save Texas (2018)
Wright’s book about his adopted home state — God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State — is a personal, political, and cultural portrait of Texas that explores why the state matters to the nation and what it reveals about America’s future. The book combines memoir, reportage, and political analysis.
Other Works
Remembering Satan (1994) is an investigation of a false-memory case in Olympia, Washington — a study of hysteria, confession, and the malleability of memory. Thirteen Days in September (2014) is a day-by-day account of the Camp David peace negotiations between Begin, Sadat, and Carter in 1978. Saints and Sinners (1993) is a study of religion in Walker, Texas. In the New World (1988) is a memoir of growing up in Dallas.
The Plague Year (2021), expanded from a New Yorker article, chronicles the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Screenwriting and Playwriting
Wright co-wrote the screenplay for The Siege (1998), a film about terrorist attacks in New York City that proved grimly prophetic. He has also written several plays, including My Trip to Al-Qaeda (2007) and Cleo (2019).
Legacy
Wright is among the finest American nonfiction writers of his generation. His work combines the reporting skills of a journalist, the narrative gifts of a novelist, and the analytical rigour of a historian. The Looming Tower is one of the essential books about the post-9/11 world.
Collecting Wright
The Looming Tower (2006, Knopf) in first edition with dust jacket is the primary collectible. Going Clear (2013, Knopf) in first edition is also sought. Wright signs at public appearances and signed copies are available.
Bibliography
| Title | Year | Publisher | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| God Save Texas Wright's deeply personal portrait of his adopted state argues that Texas is America's future — for better and worse — combining memoir, political analysis, cultural history, and reportage to explore how a state of such immense wealth, creativity, and energy can simultaneously produce extraordinary art and catastrophic governance. | 2018 | Alfred A. Knopf | English |
| Going Clear Wright's explosive investigation of Scientology — from L. Ron Hubbard's invention of Dianetics through the church's current operations under David Miscavige — combines the meticulous sourcing of his Pulitzer-winning journalism with narrative power, documenting abuse, financial exploitation, and celebrity manipulation while asking how a science fiction writer's invention became a billion-dollar institution. | 2013 | Alfred A. Knopf | English |
| The End of October Wright's pandemic thriller — researched and written before COVID-19 but published in April 2020 at the height of the first wave — follows an epidemiologist tracking a deadly flu from an Indonesian refugee camp as it spreads globally, collapsing governments and revealing the fragility of modern civilization, with a prescience that made it simultaneously a novel and an accidental prophecy. | 2020 | Alfred A. Knopf | English |
| The Looming Tower Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative history traces the rise of al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11 through the intertwined stories of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, FBI agent John O'Neill, and CIA director of counterterrorism Richard Clarke — revealing how bureaucratic rivalry between the FBI and CIA allowed the attacks to succeed despite ample warning. | 2006 | Alfred A. Knopf | English |
| Thirteen Days in September Wright reconstructs the Camp David negotiations of September 1978 — when Carter, Begin, and Sadat spent thirteen days in isolation negotiating the first Arab-Israeli peace agreement — revealing how three deeply flawed men, driven by personal faith and political desperation, achieved something that seemed impossible and that no one has replicated since. | 2014 | Alfred A. Knopf | English |