“My Trip to Al-Qaeda”

An Evening With Lawrence Wright

6 p.m., Tuesday, August 29, 2006, in the LBJ Auditorium
This Event is open to "the Friends of LBJ" Only.

“Perhaps al-Qaeda can best be understood as an engine that
runs on the despair of the Arab world,
especially its young men, whose lives are so futile
and unexpressed. Al-Qaeda offers them the chance to make history.
All they have to do is die.”

- Lawrence Wright, My Trip to Al-Qaeda

Larry Wright’s “Evening With” the Friends of the LBJ Library will be a dramatic presentation,* with video and audio clips, based on the recently published The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. In its August cover story on the book, the New York Times Book Review said:

In its simplest terms, this is the story of how a small group of men, with a frightening mix of delusion and calculation, rose from a tormented civilization to mount a catastrophic assault on the world’s mightiest power, and how another group of men and women, convinced that such an attack was on the way, tried desperately to stop it.
What a story it is. And what a riveting tale Lawrence Wright fashions in this marvelous book. “The Looming Tower” is not just a detailed, heart-stopping account of the events leading up to 9/11, written with style and verve, and carried along by villains and heroes that only a crime novelist could dream up. It’s an education, too — though you’d never know it — a thoughtful examination of the world that produced the men who brought us 9/11, and of their progeny who bedevil us today. The portrait of John O’Neill, the driven, demon-ridden F.B.I. agent who worked so frantically to stop Osama bin Laden, only to perish in the attack on the World Trade Center, is worth the price of the book alone. “The Looming Tower” is a thriller. And it’s a tragedy, too.

In the nearly five years since the attacks, we’ve heard oceans of commentary on the whys and how-comes and what-it-means and what’s nexts. Wright, a staff writer for The New Yorker — where portions of this book have appeared — has put his boots on the ground in the hard places, conducted the interviews and done the sleuthing. Others talked, he listened.

*Note: a portion of Wright’s presentation contains graphic language.

The LBJ Museum Store will be selling copies of The Looming Tower, which Wright will be signing for the Friends from 5:15 to 5:45 p.m. in the Lobby of the LBJ Auditorium prior to his presentation.

"More articles about Osama bin Laden."

"More articles about the Federal Bureau of Investigation."