Exhaustively researched account of the events leading up to the 9/11 attack. Knowing very little about the topic as I did, Wright laid out the intricacies very clearly - the mark of a well-written book, I think, is the ability to make the complex understandable, and that's what happened here. Well, when I say understandable: the events are understandable. The motivations, frankly, still fail to make any damn sense to me. One of those factors, Wright reports, seems to be a crippling sense of humiliation that I have to admit I find it hard to have much time for. One would think that it would be easier to gain respect from others (and for one's self) by funnelling research money into curing cancer rather than weaponising anthrax, for example, but clearly some people find the prospect of wholesale slaughter more therapeutic to their egos. What did surprise me, even more than this, was the sheer amount of backstabbing going on - not just on the side of the Islamist militants, but also between the American organisations like the FBI and CIA. I suppose every faction wants to grab onto power any way they can get it, but the sheer mental gymnastics, hypocrisy, and moral equivocation required to deceive, betray, and undercut your allies and bleed them dry at every step... it's genuinely exhausting to read.

Which is to say it's all very interesting, but I can't say I feel much enlightened.