Audiobooks by Lawrence Wright

[Spanish] - Cienciología: Hollywood y la prisión de la fe

"El Premio Pulitzer Lawrence Wright realiza una extraordinaria investigación sobre la Iglesia de la Cienciología, una de las organizaciones más poderosas y cuestionadas del mundo. ¿Qué se esconde detrás de la iglesia de la Cienciología? ¿Cómo ha logrado convertirse en una de las organizaciones más ricas y poderosas del planeta? ¿Por qué estrellas como Tom Cruise y John Travolta son fieles devotos de una de las organizaciones más criticadas del mundo? Lawrence Wright, premio Pulitzer por La torre elevada, y uno de los grandes periodistas de investigación del mundo, ofrece respuestas a estas y a otras muchas preguntas, y nos desvela la historia y la complicada cosmología de una organización tan intrigante como poderosa que ha conseguido captar a ricos y famosos y ha sabido utilizarlos para alcanzar sus objetivos. A través de un trabajo de investigación sin precedentes sobre una de las instituciones más opacas y secretistas que existen, Wright reflexiona sobre qué convierte un culto cualquiera en una religión, y sobre por qué los seres humanos eligen unas creencias sobre otras. Una historia apasionante que aborda el atractivo de la fe extrema y el coste de abandonarla. Reseñas: «Una historia completamente necesaria... un reportaje sobresaliente. La historia de la Cienciología es la gran ballena blanca de la investigación periodística sobre religión.» The Wall Street Journal «Un libro poderoso... una lectura esencial.» The New York Times Book Review «¿Quién podría pensar que la historia de una religión ofrecería tantos placeres culpables? El cautivador relato del ascenso de la Cienciología se completa con la historia de los escándalos de los famosos. Todos los interesados en los rumores de Hollywood disfrutarán con los capítulos de Tom Cruise y John Travolta.» Los Angeles Times «Lawrence Wright ofrece una investigación lúcida y valiente de la Cienciología -su historia, teología, su jerarquía- y el resultado es la evidencia de que la realidad puede superar la ficción.» The Washington Post"

Lawrence Wright (Author), Carlos álvarez (Narrator)

Audiobook

[Spanish] - La torre elevada: Al-Qaeda y los orígenes del 11-S

"Veinte años después del 11-S, y diez de la muerte de Osama bin Laden, La torre elevada sigue siendo la mejor obra escrito sobre el auge del fundamentalismo islámico, la creación de al-Qaeda y los fallos de los servicios de inteligencia que culminaron en el atentado de las Torres Gemelas. Obra ganadora del Premio Pulitzer. «Literatura como verdad.» Antonio Muñoz Molina La torre elevada narra la increíble historia de varios hombres cuyos destinos se entrecruzan y confluyen de forma dramática el 11 de septiembre de 2001. Con una precisión poco común, sustentada en más de quinientas entrevistas realizadas a lo largo de cinco años, nos describe el auge del fundamentalismo islámico, la creación de al-Qaeda y los errores cometidos por los confiados servicios de inteligencia que culminaron en el atentado de las Torres Gemelas. Lawrence Wright recrea de modo excepcional la transformación de Osama bin Laden y Ayman al-Zawahiri de combatientes idealistas e incompetentes en Afganistán a líderes del grupo terrorista más temido de la historia; y sigue de cerca a John O'Neil, jefe de la sección de contraterrorismo del FBI y uno de los pocos agentes estadounidenses que comprendió, ya en los años noventa, la magnitud de la amenaza que representaba dicha organización. Lleno de información, con una profunda perspectiva histórica, este es el mejor libro escrito sobre los orígenes de al-Qaeda y la muerte de Bin-Laden. Críticas: «El libro del año.» John Le Carré «Ganó el Premio Pulitzer. Su fuerza tremenda reside en el relato de los hechos y de sus orígenes, de los procesos mediante los cuales hombres corrientes eligen matar y morir en nombre de delirios arcaicos; y de cómo las ideas más dementes llegan a convertirse paso a paso en actos que cambian el curso del mundo y que podían haberse evitado.» Antonio Muñoz Molina «La torre elevada es el mejor libro que se ha escrito sobre Bin Laden, su relación con al-Zawahiri y el 11-S.» El País"

Lawrence Wright (Author), Carlos álvarez (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid

"Brought to you by Penguin. 'In the twenty-first century, infectious disease seemed like a nuisance, not like a mortal threat' Just as Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower became the defining account of our century's first devastating event, 9/11, so The Plague Year will become the defining account of the second. The story starts with the initial moments of Covid's appearance in Wuhan and ends with Joseph Biden's inauguration in an America ravaged by well over 400,000 deaths - a mortality already some ten times worse than US combat deaths in the entire Vietnam War. This is an anguished, furious memorial to a year in which all of America's great strengths - its scientific knowledge, its great civic and intellectual institutions, its spirit of voluntarism and community - were brought low, not by a terrifying new illness alone, but by political incompetence and cynicism on a scale for which there has been no precedent. With insight, sympathy, clarity and rage, The Plague Year allows the reader to see the unfolding of this great tragedy, talking with individuals on the front line, bringing together many moving and surprising stories and painting a devastating picture of a country literally and fatally misled. © Lawrence Wright 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021 THIS AUDIOBOOK MAY INCLUDE INFORMATION REGARDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC. INFORMATION RELATED TO COVID-19 CONTINUES TO EVOLVE. AUDIOBOOKS.COM ENCOURAGES YOU TO SEEK UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION AND GUIDANCE FROM YOUR LOCAL PUBLIC HEALTH UNIT."

Lawrence Wright (Author), Eric Jason Martin (Narrator)

Audiobook

[Italian] - Dio salvi il Texas

"Dio salvi il Texas è un viaggio nel più controverso degli stati americani, il cuore della Trumpland, che non elegge un politico democratico da oltre vent'anni. Con ironia e quella familiarità a tratti aspra di chi è di casa, il 'texano' Lawrence Wright, giornalista della rivista americana New Yorker e autore premiato con il Pulitzer per Le altissime torri, ci racconta come è cambiato il Texas, che oggi somiglia molto all'America che Donald Trump vorrebbe creare, e ci fa pensare a come saranno domani non soltanto i texani, ma tutti gli americani. Il Texas è uno stato in cui le minoranze sono già maggioranza, le città sono già liberal oltre che tra le più multiculturali degli Stati Uniti, il petrolio domina e condiziona l'economia. Ma è anche uno stato che si batte ad armi pari con la California in settori all'avanguardia come quello tecnologico, caratterizzato da un modello economico con poche tasse e scarsa regolamentazione, che ha prodotto una crescita straordinaria, ma anche enormi disuguaglianze. Un po' memoir, un po' saggio e un po' reportage, Dio salvi il Texas ci porta al centro dei dibattiti più importanti di questi anni, come quello sul controllo delle armi e sul muro con il Messico, senza perdere di vista i sentimenti dei texani, compreso il mai sopito senso di colpa per la tragedia del 1963, quando proprio a Dallas fu ucciso John Fitzgerald Kennedy. E mentre ci passano davanti volti e immagini che hanno scandito l'attualità e il nostro immaginario, da Lyndon Johnson ai Bush a Beyoncé, si fa strada una nuova consapevolezza: ogni cosa accade prima in Texas."

Lawrence Wright (Author), Alessandro Pili (Narrator)

Audiobook

The End of October: A page-turning thriller that warned of the risk of a global virus

"Brought to you by Penguin. A DEADLY VIRUS. QUARANTINE. A WORLD IN LOCKDOWN. THE THRILLER THAT PREDICTED IT ALL. THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'Flies thrillingly, eerily close to reality' Guardian 'This page-turner... is riveting and spookily anticipates much that has unfolded in reality' Sunday Times A race-against-time thriller, as one man must find the origin and cure for a new killer virus that has brought the world to its knees. At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with a mysterious fever. When Dr Henry Parsons - microbiologist and epidemiologist - travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe: an infected man is on his way to join the millions of worshippers in the annual Hajj to Mecca. As international tensions rise and governments enforce unprecedented measures, Henry finds himself in a race against time to track the source and find a cure – before it’s too late . . . *** 'Eerily prescient. Too bad our leaders lack his foresight.' The New York Times 'Featuring accounts of past plagues and pandemics, descriptions of pathogens and how they work, and dark notes about global warming, the book produces deep shudders . . . A disturbing, eerily timed novel.' Kirkus Reviews 'A compelling read up to the last sentence. Wright has come up with a story worthy of Michael Crichton. In an eerily calm, matter-of-fact way, and backed by meticulous research, he imagines what the world would actually be like in the grip of a devastating new virus.' Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: 'If you have a desire to really understand what is going on in the world right now, this is a novel that you cannot afford to miss!' 'Well-written and fast-paced. Most of all utterly, scarily, believable.' 'I HAVE LEARNED SO MUCH, and actually much of what I learned has informed my understanding of our current coronavirus pandemic.' 'Very well written and researched, and an all-around fascinating story'"

Lawrence Wright (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

"NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A "heart-stopping account of the events leading up to 9/11" (The New York Times Book Review), this definitive history explains in gripping detail the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, the rise of al-Qaeda, and the intelligence failures that culminated in the attacks on the World Trade Center. One of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century • A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Last 30 Years In gripping narrative that spans five decades, Lawrence Wright re-creates firsthand the transformation of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri from incompetent and idealistic soldiers in Afghanistan to leaders of the most successful terrorist group in history. He follows FBI counterterrorism chief John O'Neill as he uncovers the emerging danger from al-Qaeda in the 1990s and struggles to track this new threat. Packed with new information and a deep historical perspective, The Looming Tower is a sweeping, unprecedented history of the long road to September 11."

Lawrence Wright (Author), Lawrence Wright (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Terror Years: From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State

"With the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. Here, in ten powerful pieces first published in The New Yorker, he recalls the path that terror in the Middle East has taken, from the rise of al-Qaeda in the 1990s to the recent beheadings of reporters and aid workers by ISIS. The Terror Years draws on several articles he wrote while researching The Looming Tower, as well as many that he's written since, following where and how al-Qaeda and its core cultlike beliefs have morphed and spread. They include a portrait of the "man behind bin Laden," Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the tumultuous Egypt he helped spawn; an indelible impression of Saudi Arabia, a kingdom of silence under the control of the religious police; the Syrian film industry, at the time compliant at the edges but already exuding a feeling of the barely masked fury that erupted into civil war; the 2006-11 Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza, a study in the disparate value of human lives. Other chapters examine al-Qaeda as it forms a master plan for its future, experiences a rebellion from within the organization, and spins off a growing web of worldwide terror. The American response is covered in profiles of two FBI agents and the head of the intelligence community. The book ends with a devastating piece about the capture and slaying by ISIS of four American journalists and aid workers, and our government's failed response. On the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, The Terror Years is at once a unifying recollection of the roots of contemporary Middle Eastern terrorism, a study of how it has grown and metastasized, and, in the scary and moving epilogue, a cautionary tale of where terrorism might take us yet. With a Prologue read by the Author AFP PHOTO/HO/ISIL "

Lawrence Wright (Author), John H. Mayer, Lawrence Wright (Narrator)

Audiobook

Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David

"ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW' S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A gripping day-by-day account of the 1978 Camp David conference, when President Jimmy Carter persuaded Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to sign the first peace treaty in the modern Middle East, one which endures to this day. With his hallmark insight into the forces at play in the Middle East and his acclaimed journalistic skill, Lawrence Wright takes us through each of the thirteen days of the Camp David conference, illuminating the issues that have made the problems of the region so intractable, as well as exploring the scriptural narratives that continue to frame the conflict. In addition to his in-depth accounts of the lives of the three leaders, Wright draws vivid portraits of other fiery personalities who were present at Camp David--including Moshe Dayan, Osama el-Baz, and Zbigniew Brzezinski--as they work furiously behind the scenes. Wright also explores the significant role played by Rosalynn Carter. What emerges is a riveting view of the making of this unexpected and so far unprecedented peace. Wright exhibits the full extent of Carter's persistence in pushing an agreement forward, the extraordinary way in which the participants at the conference-many of them lifelong enemies-attained it, and the profound difficulties inherent in the process and its outcome, not the least of which has been the still unsettled struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In Thirteen Days in September, Wright gives us a resonant work of history and reportage that provides both a timely revisiting of this important diplomatic triumph and an inside look at how peace is made."

Lawrence Wright (Author), Lawrence Wright, Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

Audiobook