CSPAN-2 BookTV Saturday 9pm ET: " ...Road to 9/11"

[ProgressiveEconomist]

Arab-American civil rights activist James Zogby will interview author Lawrence Wright, writer for New Yorker magazine, about his new book, "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11"

The book apparently examines the path to 9/11 from the viewpoints of adversaries of the US and of John O'Neill, head of security at WTC.

From http://www.amazon.com/Looming-Tower-Al-Qaeda-Road-11/dp/037541486X :

"Wright, a talented New Yorker staff writer with a diverse portfolio and a long-standing personal interest in the Middle East, was on the al-Qaeda beat within hours of the 9/11 attacks. The product of his efforts is more deeply researched and engagingly narrated than nearly all of the looming stack of books on Osama bin Laden and his cohorts published in the past five years.

The events are familiar: this account begins with theorist Sayid Qutb, covers the trajectories of bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and culminates with Mohammed Atta and the collapsing Trade Center. But Wright's interview--fueled, character-driven approach captures both the complexity of individual actors--Qutb's alienation, for example, and bin Laden's struggle for legitimacy--as well as the fluid internal dynamics of the often covert terrorist organization. The tragic centerpiece of the book, familiar to New Yorker readers, is Wright's sensitive portrayal of John O'Neill, the deeply flawed working-class FBI gumshoe from New Jersey who may have been the only American to fully understand the al-Qaeda threat before 9/11. Wright seems to have found his calling: a perceptive and intense page-turner, this selection and Peter Bergen's The Osama bin Laden I Know (2006) should be considered the definitive works on the topic. Brendan Driscoll"

[ProgressiveEconomist]