Book review: The Terror Years collects Lawrence Wright’s brilliant essays on al-Qaeda and the Middle East
The Pulitzer-winning journalist never loses sight of the human dimension of the stories he’s reporting, and how decisions made at the highest levels cascade onto those below
by Lawrence Wright
Knopf
4/5 stars
The Terror Years, Lawrence Wright’s wide-ranging and intensively reported collection of stories on the Middle East in the 9/11 age, begins with a pair of masterful profiles. The first, “The Man Behind Bin Laden”, tracks the upbringing and radicalisation of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda. The second, “The Counterterrorist”, explores the career and death (in the World Trade Centre on September 11) of John P. O’Neill, an FBI agent whose obsession with Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s was met largely with shrugs.
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These pieces, which, like the others in The Terror Years originally appeared in The New Yorker, showcase two of Wright’s greatest strengths. He is equally adept at home and abroad, quizzing American officials and international players – and even when he zooms in on policy, as he frequently does, the human side of this ongoing and lethal drama always takes precedence. Wright may be an expert, but he doesn’t expect you to be. A dash of empathy and an inquisitive mind will do just fine.