The Terror Years

From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State

By: Lawrence Wright

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Paperback | 25 July 2017

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464 Pages

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20.3 x 13.2 x 2.5

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With the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. Here, in ten powerful pieces first published in The New Yorker, he recalls the path that terror in the Middle East has taken, from the rise of al-Qaeda in the 1990s to the recent beheadings of reporters and aid workers by ISIS.

The Terror Years draws on several articles he wrote while researching The Looming Tower, as well as many that he's written since, following where and how al-Qaeda and its core cultlike beliefs have morphed and spread. They include a portrait of the "man behind bin Laden," Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the tumultuous Egypt he helped spawn; an indelible impression of Saudi Arabia, a kingdom of silence under the control of the religious police; the Syrian film industry, at the time compliant at the edges but already exuding a feeling of the barely masked fury that erupted into civil war; the 2006-11 Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza, a study in the disparate value of human lives. Other chapters examine al-Qaeda as it forms a master plan for its future, experiences a rebellion from within the organization, and spins off a growing web of worldwide terror. The American response is covered in profiles of two FBI agents and the head of the intelligence community. The book ends with a devastating piece about the capture and slaying by ISIS of four American journalists and aid workers, and our government's failed response.

On the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, The Terror Years is at once a unifying recollection of the roots of contemporary Middle Eastern terrorism, a study of how it has grown and metastasized, and, in the scary and moving epilogue, a cautionary tale of where terrorism might take us yet.

From the Hardcover edition.

Industry Reviews

"Superb and gracefully written. . . . Wright is one of the most lucid writers on the subject of Islamic extremism." --The New York Review of Books "Few American writers understand the phenomenon of Islam-based terrorism better than writer Lawrence Wright." --USA Today

"An essential record of the 9/11 era. . . . Wright has a gift only the most talented journalists possess . . . he brings the world vividly to our fingertips." --O, The Oprah Magazine

"Vital. . . . Heartbreaking. . . . Darkly magnificent." --The Christian Science Monitor

"A fine tapestry of personal experience and unobtrusive reflection." --The New York Times Book Review

"This is reportage pure and simple--and it is first-rate." --The Wall Street Journal

"Compelling. . . . Insightful. . . . Wright takes readers on a disquieting journey through the world of violent jihadism, spending time with its perpetrators, its theorists, its mavericks, its victims, and its enemies. . . . Wright's portrait of the spiritual home of contemporary jihadism will be as chilling as it is credible." --Foreign Affairs

"Masterful. . . . Searing. . . . Combines a deep knowledge base with a strong current of journalistic compassion." --The Dallas Morning News

"Offers a view of the war through the lens of the individuals and societies that have taken part in it. . . . explores events through a closer, more personal lens at which historians too often balk, in an engaging, empathetic, and literary narrative style." --Commonweal

"Insightful, informative. . . . Vivid. . . . Through [Wright's] eyes, readers can understand that the fight against terror, from al-Qaida to the Islamic State, involves real people, not slogans." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Few journalists are as conversant with the frightening post-9/11 world than the New Yorker's Lawrence Wright. . . . Anyone who reflects on these thorough, thoughtful pieces will be better equipped to evaluate the prescriptions for waging that fight offered by those vying to lead it." --Shelf Awareness

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