Content area
Full Text
Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. New York: Knopf, 2006. 480pp. $27.95
Lawrence Wright has provided the military professional an excellent primer into the world of those who see the United States as a threat. The Arab world remains little understood by most Americans. It takes Wright nearly five hundred pages to lay out the complex tale of modern Islamic fundamentalism. It is no surprise that Osama Bin Laden is a key player, and Wright gives him center stage. Bin Laden is the son of a wealthy Yemeni who through grit and hard work earned the favor of the ruling family in Saudi Arabia for boldness in civil engineering projects that helped Saudi Arabia advance into the twentieth century.
The 1980s...