Draft:Lawrence Wright

Lawrence Wright
Name	Lawrence Wright
Other Names	{{{other_names}}}
Personal Details
Birth Place	United States
Brith Date	2 August 1947
Death Place	{{{death_place}}}
Death Date	{{{death_date}}}

Lawrence Wright (English: Lawrence Wright; born 2 August 1947) is an American author and journalist. He is a member of the writing team for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, and the author of the book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Wright is best known as the author of the non-fiction book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 published in 2006. Wright is also known for collaborating with documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney who directed cinematic versions of Wright's one-man show about Al-Qaeda and his book titled "Going Clear". His novel published in 2020 titled The End of October about a pandemic was released in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background and education

Wright is a graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, Texas, in 1965 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009. He is a graduate of Tulane University and taught English at the American University in Cairo (where he was awarded a Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics in 1969) in Egypt for two years. Wright lives in Austin, Texas.

Activities

In 1980, Wright started working for Texas Monthly magazine and continued to contribute to Rolling Stone magazine, and in late 1992 became a member of The New Yorker magazine.

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Wright is the author of six books but is best known for publishing The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 in 2006. The book The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright won the Pulitzer Prize and presents an amazing narrative of the events leading to the 9/11 incident. A gripping narrative covering five decades, The Looming Tower explains with unprecedented detail the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, the rise of Al-Qaeda, and the intelligence failures that culminated in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Lawrence Wright recreates the transformation of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri from incompetent and idealistic soldiers in Afghanistan to leaders of the most successful terrorist group in history. He follows John O'Neill, head of FBI terrorism countermeasures, who discovered the danger of the rise of Al-Qaeda in the 1990s and strives to suppress this threat. Filled with new information and deep historical perspective, The Looming Tower is the long road to the 9/11 event.

Going Clear

In this book, Wright explains the Scientology sect, which however led to a denial statement from the said church.

Other projects

Other books by Wright include Remembering Satan: The Tragic Case of Recovered Memory (1994) regarding the Paul Ingram false memory case.

Wright co-wrote the screenplay for the film The Siege (1998), which narrates a terrorist attack in New York City that leads to the restriction of civil liberties and the arrest of Arab-Americans.

A documentary featuring Wright, titled My Journey to Al-Qaeda, was first broadcast in September 2010 on HBO. This documentary was based on his travels and experiences in the Middle East during his research for The Looming Tower. My Journey to Al-Qaeda appears to be a first-person narrative on the subjects of Al-Qaeda, Islamic extremism, anti-American sentiments, and the US military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, combining documentary films and photos.

Awards

2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for The Looming Tower The New York Times Best Seller of 2006 for The Looming Tower 2006 The New York Times Notable Book of the Year for The Looming Tower 2006 The New York Times Best Books of the Year for The Looming Tower 2006 IRE Award for The Looming Tower 2006 National Book Award Finalist for The Looming Tower 2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for The Looming Tower 2006 Time Magazine Best Books of the Year for The Looming Tower 2007 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for The Looming Tower 2007 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism for The Looming Tower 2007 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for The Looming Tower 2007 Lionel Gelber Prize for The Looming Tower 2007 Arthur Ross Book Award Finalist for The Looming Tower 2007 PEN Center USA Literary Award (Nonfiction Research) for The Looming Tower 2009 Newsweek 50 Books for Our Times for The Looming Tower 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction for Going Clear 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) Finalist for Going Clear 2015 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special.

Books

Non-fiction

1. City Children, Country Summer: A Story of Ghetto Children Among the Amish. Scribner.
2. In the New World: Growing Up with America, 1964–1984. Alfred A. Knopf. 1988. .
3. Saints and Sinners. Alfred A. Knopf. 1993.
4. Remembering Satan: A Tragic Case of Recovered Memory. Vintage Books 1994.
5. Twins: And What They Tell Us About Who We Are. John Wiley & Sons 1997.
6. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Alfred A. Knopf. 2006.
7. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. Alfred A. Knopf. 2013.
8. Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David. Alfred. 2014.
9. The Years of Terror: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State. Alfred A. Knopf.
10. God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State. Alfred A. Knopf. 2018.
11. The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid. Alfred A. Knopf. 2021.

Fiction

1. God's Favorite: A Novel. Simon & Schuster 2000.
2. The End of October: A Novel. Knopf. 28 April 2020. p. 400.
3. Plays
4. Camp David (First performed at Arena Stage (Washington, D.C.) in March 2014)

Articles

1. Wright, Lawrence (3 July 2006). "The Agent". The New Yorker. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
2. Wright, Lawrence (20 September 2010). "The Talk of the Town: Comment: Intolerance".
3. The New Yorker. Vol. 86 No. 28. pp. 47–48. Retrieved 21 December 2011.
4. Wright, Lawrence (14 February 2011). "Reports and Essays: Profiles: The Apostate, Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2 January 2013.
5. Wright, Lawrence (7 July 2017). "The Future of America is Texas". The New Yorker. Retrieved 16 June 2018 .