Who would have supposed that the Romans had lagged hot-water pipes? That Queen Elizabeth I had a valve water-closet? That Louis IV had cushions in his bath? This informative and hilarious book leads the reader to believe that more may be learned about the past from bathrooms than from battlefields, and that patterns of social history are mirrored in the bathwater.

Clean and Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and the Water-Closet

History

WRIGHT, LAWRENCE

World

Penguin Global

'This is a funny, pointed love letter to Texas, at once elegiac and clear-eyed' Ben Macintyre, The Times From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, God Save Texas is a journey through the most controversial state in America. Texas is a Republican state in the heart of Trumpland that hasn't elected a Democrat to a statewide office in more than twenty years; but it is also a state in which minorities already form a majority (including the largest number of Muslim adherents in the United States). The cities are Democrat and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king but Texas now leads California in technology exports and has an economy only somewhat smaller than Australia's. Lawrence Wright has written an enchanting book about what is often seen as an unenchanting place. Having spent most of his life there, while remaining deeply aware of its oddities, Wright is as charmed by Texan foibles and landscapes as he is appalled by its politics and brutality. With its economic model of low taxes and minimal regulation producing both extraordinary growth and striking income disparities, Texas, Wright shows, looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. This profound portrait of the state, completed just as Texas battled to rebuild after the devastating storms of summer 2017, not only reflects the United States back as it is, but as it was and as it might be. As much the home of Roy Orbison and Willie Nelson as of J.R., Ross Perot and the Bush family, as filled with magical scenery as with desolate oil-fields and strip-malls, Texas is a bellwether, super-sized mass of contradictions: a life-long study.

God Save Texas: A Journey into the Future of America

Americas

Alfred.A. Knopf

'A virtuoso feat ... a book of panoramic breadth' New York Times Book Review\n'A devastating analysis ... Wright is a master of knitting together complex narratives' The Observer\nJust 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.\nThe 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.\nThis 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.\nWith 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.\n'Maddening and sobering - as comprehensive an account of the first year of the pandemic as we've yet seen' Kirkus

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Diseases & Physical Ailments

Allen Lane.

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

Vintage

National Book Award Finalist A clear-sighted revelation, a deep penetration into the world of Scientology by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, the now-classic study of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. Based on more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—both famous and less well known—and years of archival research, Lawrence Wright uses his extraordinary investigative ability to uncover for us the inner workings of the Church of Scientology. At the book’s center, two men whom Wright brings vividly to life, showing how they have made Scientology what it is today: The darkly brilliant science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, whose restless, expansive mind invented a new religion. And his successor, David Miscavige—tough and driven, with the unenviable task of preserving the church after the death of Hubbard. We learn about Scientology’s complicated cosmology and special language. We see the ways in which the church pursues celebrities, such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and how such stars are used to advance the church’s goals. And we meet the young idealists who have joined the Sea Org, the church’s clergy, signing up with a billion-year contract. In Going Clear, Wright examines what fundamentally makes a religion a religion, and whether Scientology is, in fact, deserving of this constitutional protection. Employing all his exceptional journalistic skills of observation, understanding, and shaping a story into a compelling narrative, Lawrence Wright has given us an evenhanded yet keenly incisive book that reveals the very essence of what makes Scientology the institution it is.

KNOPF

The Basis for the HBO Documentary. A National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist. Scientology presents itself as a scientific approach to spiritual enlightenment, but its practices have long been shrouded in mystery. Now Lawrence Wright—armed with his investigative talents, years of archival research, and more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—uncovers the inner workings of the church. We meet founder L. Ron Hubbard, the highly imaginative but mentally troubled science-fiction writer, and his tough, driven successor, David Miscavige. We go inside their specialized cosmology and language. We learn about the church’s legal attacks on the IRS, its vindictive treatment of critics, and its phenomenal wealth. We see the church court celebrities such as Tom Cruise while consigning its clergy to hard labor under billion-year contracts. Through it all, Wright asks what fundamentally comprises a religion, and if Scientology in fact merits this Constitutionally-protected label. Brilliantly researched, compellingly written, Going Clear pulls back the curtain on one of the most secretive organizations at work today. A New York Times Notable Book A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, New York magazine,Slate, Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly, People, The Week, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews A GoodReads Reader's Choice

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 importante de la historia; y sigue de cerca a John O'Neill, 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 el atentado que cambió el curso de la historia.Esta edición incluye un epílogo del autor con motivo del décimo aniversario de los atentados del 11-S, la evolución de al-Qaeda y la muerte de Bin Laden.«El libro del año.» JOHN LE CARRÉ«Literatura como verdad.» ANTONIO MUÑOZ MOLINA«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

La torre elevada: Al-Qaeda y los orígenes del 11-S (Spanish Edition)

Debolsillo]

We first meet Larry Wright in 1960. He is thirteen and moving with his family to Dallas, the essential city of the New World just beginning to rise across the southern rim of the United States. As we follow him through the next two decades—the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the devastating assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the sexual revolution, the crisis of Watergate, and the emergence of Ronald Reagan—we relive the pivotal and shocking events of those crowded years. Lawrence Wright has written the autobiography of a generation, giving back to us with stunning force the feelings of those turbulent times when the euphoria of Kennedy’s America would come to its shocking end. Filled with compassion and insight, In the New World is both the intimate tale of one man’s coming-of-age, and a universal story of the American experience of two crucial decades.

In the New World: Growing Up with America from the Sixties to the Eighties

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

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.

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

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.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by WRIGHT, LAWRENCE. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by WRIGHT, LAWRENCE

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by WRIGHT, LAWRENCE. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Clean and Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and the Water-Closet

God Save Texas: A Journey into the Future of America

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

La torre elevada: Al-Qaeda y los orígenes del 11-S (Spanish Edition)

In the New World: Growing Up with America from the Sixties to the Eighties

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

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