Book Review: The Looming Tower:Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright

Grade: A

The New York Times named The Looming Tower one of the ten best books of 2006. I agree. This is a wonderful book that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone wishing to understand the making of Al-Qaeda and the events leading to September 11, 2001. But don't expect this book to recount the tale told through the news. Instead, Wright explains the philosophical origins of Al-Qaeda, the history of Bin Laden's wealth and influence, including the construction empire built by his illiterate father, the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, the formation of Al Qaeda, and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Wright ends the book in climactic fashion by telling the story of FBI agent John O'Neill, a brash, driven agent dedicated to ending Al Qaeda and capturing Bin Laden. Ultimately, O'Neill retires from the FBI in July 2001 due to inter-agency politics and problems resulting from his turbulent personal life. In the great irony of the book, O'Neill retires to become Chief of Security at the World Trade Center, where he dies on September 11, 2001, killed by the group he worked so hard to destroy. Its worth reading this book for O'Neill's story alone.

Rather than recount more details, I end with a humorous account about the Taliban's actions shortly after taking Kabul:

The fashion dictators demanded that a man's beard be longer than the grip of his hand. Violators went to jail until they were sufficiently bushy. A man with "Beatle-ly" hair would have his head shaved. Should a woman leave her home without her veil, "her home will be marked and her husband punished," the Taliban penal code decreed. The animals in the zoo--those that had not been stolen in previous administrations--were slain or left to starve. One zealous, perhaps mad, Taliban jumped into a bear's cage and cut off his nose, reputedly because the animal's "beard" was not long enough. Another fighter, intoxicated by events and his own power, leaped into the lion's den and cried out, "I am the lion now!" The lion killed him. Another Taliban soldier threw a grenade into the den, blinding the animal. These two, the noseless bear and the blind lion, together with two wolves, were the only animals that survived the Taliban rule.

"'Throw reason to the dogs,' read a sign posted on the wall of the office of the religious police, who were trained by the Saudis. 'It stinks of corruption.' And yet the Afghan people, so exhausted by war, initially embraced the imposition of this costly order.'"