Notes from September's Nonfiction Book Discussion

We have been very busy here at Charleston County Public Library with the Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment of the Arts designed to encourage literary reading and community discussion of great books! From September 9 to October 14, Charleston County Public Library and many partner organizations in the community are hosting a variety of events, from jazz performances to lectures to book discussions, all centered around the reading of Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. To learn more about the novel, the author, and the calendar of Big Read events, visit the Charleston County Public Library website at http://www.ccpl.org/ and the Big Read website at http://www.neabigread.org/.

However, we did find time this month for a stimulating discussion of Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. For those of us who had not read much about the history of al-Qaeda and the United States intelligence response to it prior to 9/11, the book provided an informative narrative overview with compelling portraits of major figures such as Osama bin Laden and FBI counterterrorism chief John O'Neill. Several members of our discussion recommended other titles that they felt provided more comprehensive coverage of this history, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 by Ron Suskind and Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll. And several members expressed disappointment that Wright's book did not give more coverage to the events and personalities of 9/11 itself. For the most part, however, we enjoyed Wright's use of what he calls horizontal and vertical reporting, that is, offering the perspective of as many people as he could interview while at the same time providing in-depth information from and profiles of people he interviewed on many different occasions.

Our next book, The Places In Between by Rory Stewart, will provide a nice contrast in style and perspective to The Looming Tower, yet will deepen our understanding of Afghanistan and political Islam.