The Looming Tower - wikipedia The Looming Tower For the miniseries with the same title, see The Looming Tower ( miniseries ). The Looming Tower : Al - Qaeda and the Road to 9 / 11 Cover of the first US edition Author Lawrence Wright Cover artist Chip Kidd ( designer ) Country United States Language English Genre Non-fiction Publisher Alfred A. Knopf ( US ) Publication date 2006 Media type Print ( Hardcover ) Pages 480 ISBN 978 - 0 - 375 - 41486 - 2 OCLC 64592193 Dewey Decimal 973.931 22 LC Class HV6432. 7. W75 2006 The Looming Tower : Al - Qaeda and the Road to 9 / 11 is a 2006 non-fiction book by Lawrence Wright. It is a historical look at the way in which the militant organization Al - Qaeda came into being, the background for various terrorist attacks and how they were investigated, and the events that led to the September 11 attacks. In 2007, Wright was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for the work. A 10 - episode television miniseries adaptation aired in 2018 on Hulu. Contents 1 Overview 1.1 Quran reference in title 2 Awards and honors 3 Television adaptation 4 References 5 External links Overview The Looming Tower is largely focused on the people who conspired to commit the September 11 attacks, their motives and personalities, and how they interacted. The book starts with Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian religious scholar who visited the United States in the late 1940s and returned to his home to become an anti-West Islamist and eventually a martyr for his beliefs. There is also a portrait of Ayman al - Zawahiri, from his childhood in Egypt to his participation in and later leadership of Egyptian Islamic Jihad to his merging of his organization with Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden is the person described the most, from his childhood in Saudi Arabia in a rich family, his participation in the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, his role as a financier of terrorist groups, his stay in Sudan, his return to Afghanistan and his interactions with the Taliban. The 1998 United States embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, are described, as is the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. Lawrence Wright also describes in detail some of the Americans involved, in particular Richard A. Clarke, chief counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council, and John P. O'Neill, an Assistant Deputy Director of Investigation for the FBI who served as America 's top bin Laden hunter until his retirement from the FBI in August 2001, after which he got a job as head of security at the World Trade Center, where he died in the 9 / 11 attacks. The book also describes some of the problems with lack of cooperation between the FBI and the CIA and other American government organizations that prevented them from uncovering the 9 / 11 plot in time. Because The Looming Tower is to a large extent focused on telling the story of the people involved, it does not describe the 9 / 11 plot and its execution in much detail. It focuses more on the background and the conditions that produced the people who planned and staged the attack, and information about those who were combating terror against the United States. Quran reference in title The words `` looming towers '' or `` lofty towers '' ( بروج مشيدة ) appear in the Quran 4 : 78 ( Sūrat an - Nisā ' ). According to Wright, Osama bin Laden, at a wedding before the 9 / 11 attack, quoted the line, repeating it three times : `` Wherever you are, death will find you, even if you are in lofty towers '' ( أينما تكونوا يدرككم الموت ولو كنتم في بروج مشيدة, ' aynamā takūnū yadrikkumu l - mawtu wa - law kuntum fī burūjin mušayyadatin ). Awards and honors 2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2006 New York Times bestseller 2006 New York Times Notable Book of the Year 2006 New York Times Best Books of the Year 2006 IRE Award 2006 National Book Award finalist 2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist 2006 Time magazine 's Best Books of the Year 2007 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction 2007 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism 2007 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize 2007 Lionel Gelber Prize 2007 Arthur Ross Book Award shortlist 2007 PEN Center USA Literary Award ( Research Nonfiction ) 2009 Newsweek 50 Books for Our Times Television adaptation Main article : The Looming Tower ( miniseries ) A 10 - episode television miniseries based on the book began airing on Hulu February 28, 2018. Actors include Alec Baldwin as CIA director George Tenet, Jeff Daniels as John O'Neill, Tahar Rahim as Ali Soufan, and Peter Sarsgaard as CIA analyst Martin Schmidt. References Jump up ^ Lawrence Wright Interview at The Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, page 3. Jump up ^ Pedersen, Erik ( 14 November 2017 ). `` Hulu Sets Premiere Dates For ' Handmaid 's Tale ', ' The Path ' & Two New Series ''. Deadline. Retrieved 14 November 2017. Jump up ^ Elavksy, Cindy ( May 17, 2017 ). `` Celebrity Extra ''. King Features. Retrieved August 16, 2017. Jump up ^ Elavksy, Cindy ( April 5, 2017 ). `` Celebrity Extra ''. King Features. Retrieved August 16, 2017. External links The Looming Tower on Open Library at the Internet Archive The Looming Tower Reviews at Metacritic ( Retrieved April 8, 2009 ) AuthorViews video interview about The Looming Tower Lawrence Wright Interview : Conversations with History ; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley Lawrence Wright speaking at Princeton University on `` Al Qaeda : Past, Present and Future ''. April 25, 2007 After Words interview with Wright on The Looming Tower, September 9, 2006 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction ( 2001 -- 2025 ) Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix ( 2001 ) Carry Me Home : Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter ( 2002 ) `` A Problem from Hell '' : America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power ( 2003 ) Gulag : A History by Anne Applebaum ( 2004 ) Ghost Wars : The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll ( 2005 ) Imperial Reckoning by Caroline Elkins ( 2006 ) The Looming Tower : Al - Qaeda and the Road to 9 / 11 by Lawrence Wright ( 2007 ) The Years of Extermination : Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939 - 1945 by Saul Friedländer ( 2008 ) Slavery by Another Name : The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon ( 2009 ) The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman ( 2010 ) The Emperor of All Maladies : A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee ( 2011 ) The Swerve : How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt ( 2012 ) Devil in the Grove : Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King ( 2013 ) Toms River : A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin ( 2014 ) The Sixth Extinction : An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert ( 2015 ) Black Flags : The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick ( 2016 ) Evicted : Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond ( 2017 ) Complete list ( 1962 -- 1975 ) ( 1976 -- 2000 ) ( 2001 -- 2025 ) Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Looming_Tower&oldid=847119209 '' Categories : Books about al - Qaeda 2006 non-fiction books Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction - winning works Alfred A. Knopf books Books with cover art by Chip Kidd Hidden categories : Pages to import images to Wikidata Articles containing Arabic - language text Articles with Open Library links Talk Contents About Wikipedia Deutsch Bahasa Indonesia 日本 語 Edit links This page was last edited on 23 June 2018, at 02 : 30 ( UTC ). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. About Wikipedia

Question: who is mr clarke in the looming tower
Answer: chief counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council