Wright is the author of one novel, God’s Favorite (Simon & Schuster, 2000) and eight nonfiction books, including City Children, Country Summer (Scribner’s, 1979), In the New World: Growing Up with America, 1960-1984 (Knopf, 1988), Saints & Sinners (Knopf, 1993), Remembering Satan (Knopf, 1994), and Twins; Genes, Environment, and the Mystery of Identity(Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1997). The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Knopf, 2006), was published to immediate and widespread acclaim, spending eight weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and being translated into twenty-five languages. It won the Lionel Gelber Award for Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Award for History, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Time Magazine pronounced it one of the 100 best nonfiction books ever written. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (Knopf, 2013), also a New York Times bestseller, was nominated for the National Book Award and won the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. His most recent book, Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David, was published in the fall of 2014, and was named by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the top ten books of the year.

In 2006, Wright premiered his one-man play, “My Trip to Al-Qaeda,” at The New Yorker Festival, and then enjoyed a sold-out six-week run at the Culture Project in Soho. It was made into a documentary film, directed by Academy Award-winner Alex Gibney, which appeared on HBO in the fall of 2010. Wright also wrote and performed another one-man show, “The Human Scale,” concerning the standoff between Israel and Hamas over the abduction of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. The Public Theater produced the play, which ran for a month off-Broadway in 2010 before moving to the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv. In the spring of 2013, the Berkeley Repertory Theater produced Wright’s play about Oriana Fallaci, “Fallaci,” directed by Oskar Eustis. A year later, the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., premiered Wright’s acclaimed play “Camp David,” about the Carter-Begin-Sadat summit.

Sponsored by: ICOMME and Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law