Lawrence Wright has 9 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 7 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 94 ratings. The most-rated is The Looming Tower.
The Looming Tower
Summary
A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright's remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States. The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight by telling the story through the interweaving lives of four men: the two leaders of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri; the FBI's counterterrorism chief, John O'Neill; and the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal. As these lives unfold, we see revealed: The crosscurrents of modern Islam that helped to radicalize Zawahiri and bin Laden The birth of al-Qaeda and its unsteady development into an organization capable of the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole O'Neill's heroic efforts to track al-Qaeda before 9/11, and his tragic death in the World Trade towers Prince Turki's transformation from bin Laden's ally to his enemy The failures of the FBI, CIA, and NSA to share intelligence that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks The Looming Tower broadens and deepens our knowledge of these signal events by taking us behind the scenes. Here is Sayyid Qutb, founder of the modern Islamist movement, lonely and despairing as he meets Western culture up close in 1940s America; the privileged childhoods of bin Laden and Zawahiri; family life in the al-Qaeda compounds of Sudan and Afghanistan; O'Neill's high-wire act in balancing his all-consuming career with his equally entangling personal life - he was living with three women, each of them unaware of the others' existence - and the nitty-gritty of turf battles among US intelligence agencies. Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws all elements of the story into a galvanizing narrative that adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at September 11, 2001. The richness of its new information, and the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely and effectively with the continuing terrorist threat.
©2006 Lawrence Wright (P)2017 Random House Audio
The End of October
Summary
"An eerily prescient novel about a devastating virus that begins in Asia before going global.... A page-turner that has the earmarks of an instant best seller." (New York Post) "Featuring accounts of past plagues and pandemics, descriptions of pathogens and how they work, and dark notes about global warming, the book produces deep shudders.... A disturbing, eerily timed novel." (Kirkus Reviews) "A compelling read up to the last sentence. Wright has come up with a story worthy of Michael Crichton. In an eerily calm, matter-of-fact way, and backed by meticulous research, he imagines what the world would actually be like in the grip of a devastating new virus." (Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone) "This timely literary page-turner shows Wright is on a par with the best writers in the genre." (Publishers Weekly, starred review) In this riveting medical thriller - from the Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author - Dr. Henry Parsons, an unlikely but appealing hero, races to find the origins and cure of a mysterious new killer virus as it brings the world to its knees. At an internment camp in Indonesia, 47 people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When Henry Parsons - microbiologist, epidemiologist - travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe: An infected man is on his way to join the millions of worshipers in the annual Hajj to Mecca. Now, Henry joins forces with a Saudi prince and doctor in an attempt to quarantine the entire host of pilgrims in the holy city.... A Russian émigré, a woman who has risen to deputy director of US Homeland Security, scrambles to mount a response to what may be an act of biowarfare.... Already-fraying global relations begin to snap, one by one, in the face of a pandemic.... Henry's wife, Jill, and their children face diminishing odds of survival in Atlanta.... And the disease slashes across the United States, dismantling institutions - scientific, religious, governmental - and decimating the population. As packed with suspense as it is with the fascinating history of viral diseases, Lawrence Wright has given us a full-tilt, electrifying, one-of-a-kind thriller.
©2020 Lawrence Wright (P)2020 Random House Audio
The Terror Years
Summary
Ten powerful pieces first published in The New Yorker recall the path 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. 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. This collection draws on several articles he wrote while researching that book, as well as many that he's written since, following where and how al-Qaeda and its core cult-like beliefs have morphed and spread. They include an indelible impression of Saudi Arabia, a kingdom of silence under the control of the religious police; the Syrian film industry, then compliant at the edges but already exuding a feeling of the barely masked fury that erupted into civil war; and the 2006-11 Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza, a study in disparate values of human lives. Others continue to look into 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 terror in the world. The American response is covered in profiles of two FBI agents and a chief of the CIA. It ends with the recent devastating piece about the capture and beheading by ISIS of four American journalists and aid workers, and how our government failed to handle the situation.
©2016 Lawrence Wright (P)2016 Random House Audio
God Save Texas
Summary
A New York Times Notable Book National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist An NPR Best Book of the Year God Save Texas is a journey through the most controversial state in America. It is a red state, but the cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king, but Texas now leads California in technology exports. Low taxes and minimal regulation have produced extraordinary growth, but also striking income disparities. Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. Bringing together the historical and the contemporary, the political and the personal, Texas native Lawrence Wright gives us a colorful, wide-ranging portrait of a state that not only reflects our country as it is, but as it may become - and reveals how the battle for Texas’s soul encompasses us all.
©2018 Lawrence Wright (P)2018 Random House Audio
White Collar Criminal Law Explained
Summary
We are surrounded by real-life stories of white-collar crime, with pharmaceutical executives going to jail for their roles in the opioid crisis, titans of Wall Street prosecuted for insider trading and securities fraud, and senior government officials charged with fraud and corruption. But although it’s widespread, a fascinating aspect of white-collar crime is just how blurry its boundaries are. In 24 lessons, consider the characteristics of white-collar crime that set it apart from other areas of criminal law. Early lessons offer you a foundational understanding of the nature and tools of federal white-collar prosecutions, including the role of federal prosecutors, federal grand juries, subpoenas and search warrants, and the federal criminal justice system. At the heart of this series: in-depth looks at the most common white-collar offenses, including mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, money laundering, insider trading, and extortion. Professor Eliason’s legal expertise in the area of white-collar criminal law, combined with his background as an assistant United States attorney for the District of Columbia, transforms what would be, in lesser hands, dry legal lectures into eye-opening investigations into some of the greatest crimes in US history, involving infamous figures such as financial fraudster Bernie Madoff and former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 The Great Courses (P)2020 The Teaching Company, LLC
The Great Terror
Summary
The definitive work on Stalin's purges, The Great Terror was universally acclaimed when it first appeared in 1968. While the original volume had relied heavily on unofficial sources, later developments within the Soviet Union provided an avalanche of new material, which Conquest has mined to write this revised and updated edition of his classic work. Under the light of fresh evidence, it is remarkable how many of Conquest's most disturbing conclusions have been verified. Many details have also been added, including hitherto secret information on the three great "Moscow Trials", the purge of writers and other members of the intelligentsia, life in the labor camps, and many other key matters. Both a leading Sovietologist and a highly respected poet, Conquest blends profound research with evocative prose to create a compelling and eloquent chronicle of one of the 20th century's most tragic events.
©1990 Robert Conquest (P)1992 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Thirteen Days in September
Summary
A gripping day-by-day account of the 1978 Camp David conference, when President Jimmy Carter persuaded Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to sign the first peace treaty in the modern Middle East, one which endures to this day. With his hallmark insight into the forces at play in the Middle East and his acclaimed journalistic skill, Lawrence Wright takes us through each of the 13 days of the Camp David conference, illuminating the issues that have made the problems of the region so intractable, as well as exploring the scriptural narratives that continue to frame the conflict. In addition to his in-depth accounts of the lives of the three leaders, Wright draws vivid portraits of other fiery personalities who were present at Camp David - including Moshe Dayan, Osama el-Baz, and Zbigniew Brzezinski - as they work furiously behind the scenes. Wright also explores the significant role played by Rosalynn Carter. What emerges is a riveting view of the making of this unexpected and so far unprecedented peace. Wright exhibits the full extent of Carter's persistence in pushing an agreement forward, the extraordinary way in which the participants at the conference - many of them lifelong enemies - attained it, and the profound difficulties inherent in the process and its outcome, not the least of which has been the still unsettled struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In Thirteen Days in September, Wright gives us a resonant work of history and reportage that provides both a timely revisiting of this important diplomatic triumph and an inside look at how peace is made.
©2014 Lawrence Wright (P)2014 Random House Audio
Remembering Satan
Summary
In 1988, Ericka and Julie Ingram began making a series of accusations of sexual abuse against their father, Paul Ingram, who was a respected deputy sheriff in Olympia, Washington. At first the accusations were confined to molestations in their childhood, but they grew to include torture and rape as recently as the month before. At a time when reported incidents of "recovered memories" had become widespread, these accusations were not unusual. What captured national attention in this case is that, under questioning, Ingram appeared to remember participating in bizarre satanic rites involving his whole family and other members of the sheriff's department. Remembering Satan is a lucid, measured, yet absolutely riveting inquest into a case that destroyed a family, engulfed a small town, and captivated an America obsessed by rumors of a satanic underground. It follows the increasingly bizarre accusations and confessions, as well as the claims and counterclaims of police, FBI investigators, and mental-health professionals. Remembering Satan gives us what is at once a psychological detective story and a domestic tragedy about what happens when modern science is subsumed by our most archaic fears.
©1994 Lawrence Wright (P)2020 Tantor
Seeds of Kindness...
Summary
Kindness was a lesson worth learning as a child in the 1950s and 1960s - and it is more relevant than ever as the world confronts the COVID-19 pandemic and racial unrest. Jim Boeglin draws on the lessons he learned as a child and throughout adulthood to spread that message in this book of poetry. Much of the collection was written during “shelter in place” restrictions in the spring and summer of 2020, which was also when protests raged throughout the United States to prevent racial injustice in the aftermath of the brutal murder of George Floyd. It was a time of stress, sorrow, and pain in the world - especially for minorities, and the millions of coronavirus victims and the families of those infected. It was also a challenging time for first responders, healthcare workers, and others on the front lines of treatment. Ponder the impact of being kind during a time of global crisis and plant seeds to spread positivity as you read this collection.
©2020 Jim Boeglin (P)2020 Jim Boeglin