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Lawrence Wright
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Lawrence Wright

Goodreads Author


Born
in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, The United States
Website

Twitter
lawrence_wright

Genre
Nonfiction, Thriller, Crime

Member Since
April 2016


Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. He has won a Pulitzer Prize and three National Magazine Awards.

His latest book, The Human Scale , is a sweeping, timely thriller, in which a Palestinian-American FBI agent teams up with a hardline Israeli cop to solve the murder of the Israeli police chief in Gaza. According to The New York Times, “Wright succeeds in this complex, deeply felt work.”

He is the author of 11 nonfiction books. His book about the rise of al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Knopf, 2006), was published to immediate and widespread acclaim. It has been translated into 25 languages and won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Ge ...more

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How similar your new novel is with the actual pandemic we are living right now? And what was your reaction when you realized we were going to go through a pandemic, having this book, already written?
Lawrence Wright My virus, called Kongoli, is actually built on the 1918 Spanish flu. Like Covid-19 (which is a coronavirus, not an influenza), Kongoli is a new diseas…moreMy virus, called Kongoli, is actually built on the 1918 Spanish flu. Like Covid-19 (which is a coronavirus, not an influenza), Kongoli is a new disease, unknown in the human population until it suddenly arises in Asia and spreads across the globe. Kongoli is more fatal than Covid-19 but not as contagious.
As for the timing of the publication, it's a total coincidence that the book appears in the middle of a pandemic, but the eerie parallels with what we see unfolding in front of us are not. This is exactly what public health officials have been warning about for decades.(less)
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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?
Lawrence Wright The filmmaker Ridley Scott approached me a decade ago with a question. He had read Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel, "The Road." Ridley's ques…moreThe filmmaker Ridley Scott approached me a decade ago with a question. He had read Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel, "The Road." Ridley's question was "What happened?" What force could have crushed civilization? I immediately thought of something like the 1918 Spanish flu, appearing now when people live in dense cities and travel across the globe so rapidly. Would we be any better prepared than our ancestors?(less)
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Combine Editions

Average rating: 4.09 · 123,722 ratings · 14,012 reviews · 82 distinct works • Similar authors
Going Clear: Scientology, H...
4.04 avg rating — 44,634 ratings — published 2013 — 38 editions
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The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda...
4.36 avg rating — 36,470 ratings — published 2006 — 75 editions
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The End of October
3.76 avg rating — 19,766 ratings — published 2020 — 32 editions
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God Save Texas: A Journey i...
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 6,907 ratings — published 2018 — 18 editions
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Mr. Texas
4.01 avg rating — 3,365 ratings — published 2023 — 6 editions
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Thirteen Days in September:...
4.19 avg rating — 3,212 ratings — published 2014 — 34 editions
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The Plague Year: America in...
4.12 avg rating — 2,933 ratings — published 2020 — 14 editions
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Remembering Satan: A Tragic...
3.64 avg rating — 2,553 ratings — published 1994 — 21 editions
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The Terror Years: From al-Q...
4.03 avg rating — 1,583 ratings — published 2016 — 15 editions
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The Human Scale
4.36 avg rating — 1,447 ratings — published 2025 — 6 editions
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Lawrence is Currently Reading

Chains of Love
Lawrence Wright is currently reading
by Katrina Strauss (Goodreads Author)
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Apr 13, 2016 07:49AM

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Lawrence Wright answered Derek's question:
What is your recommended reading to learn more about the extemely complex history leading up to the Isreal/Palestine war? I also thought of your work when I walked by the Scientology building located on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Lawrence Wright
thanks, Derek. I read a ton of books about the history of the Middle East while I was writing my account of the 1978 Carter-Begin-Sadat summit that led to the first and most durable peace in the Mideast, 'Thirteen Days in September." Many histories a See Full Answer
Dec 09, 2023 07:43AM  · 8 likes · 
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Quotes by Lawrence Wright  (?)
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“Radicalism usually prospers in the gap between rising expectations and declining opportunities. This is especially true where the population is young, idle, and bored; where the art is impoverished; where entertainment—movies, theater, music—is policed or absent altogether; and where young men are set apart from the consoling and socializing presence of women.”
― Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower
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“Religion is always an irrational enterprise, no matter how ennobling it may be to the human spirit.”
― Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
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“If you paid any attention to the role of disease in human affairs, you’d know the danger we’re in. We got smug after all of the victories over infection in the twentieth century, but nature is not a stable force. It evolves, it changes, and it never becomes complacent. We don’t have the time or resources now to do anything other than fight this disease. Every nation on earth has to be involved whether you think of them as friends or enemies. If we’re going to save civilization, we have to fight together and not against each other.”
― Lawrence Wright, The End of October
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