Library Journal Review

Journalist Lawrence Wright drew on his extensive experience in the Arab world to write The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, and following the book's publication in 2006, Wright staged a one-man performance based on it. This film now brings that performance to viewers. We see Wright on stage, behind the scenes in the makeup chair, and walking the streets of Cairo and other Middle Eastern cities, while we hear him explore the emotional aspects and moral dilemmas of his work. Wright traces the roots of Islamic terrorism back to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and to the conditions under which men accused of assisting in the plot were held. "To understand Egyptian prisons," Wright says, "is to understand the roots of Islamic terror." The story that Wright tells is, on the one hand, deeply personal. His grief and anger following the 9/11 attacks are obvious. Simultaneously, his story is grounded in solid research and his experience as a reporter. VERDICT Gibney and Wright have done an excellent job of exploring the complex and confusing issues behind Islamic terrorism and the toll terrorism and the war against it have taken on the United States and the world. This is a compelling and haunting film. Viewers will find themselves thinking about it long after the credits have rolled across the screen.-Rosemary Arneson, Univ. of Mary Washington Lib., Fredericksburg, VA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.