Original Proposal

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Original Proposal

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---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
To: ReadingLiberallyEmailList@johnkarls.com
Bcc: The Approximately 150 Recipients of Our Weekly E-mail
Subject: The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State – Nov 16
Date: To be sent Sat, October 22, 2016
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Dear Friends,

Our next meeting is Wednesday evening Nov 16 (to maintain our minimum 4-week gap from Oct 19).

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OUR FOCUS BOOK

The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State by Lawrence Wright (Knopf 8/23/2016 – 384 pages) was proposed by one of our long-time regulars, Ted Gurney, retired U/Utah Biology Professor.

$21.80 + shipping or $14.99 Kindle from Amazon.com.

Or as little as $16.53 + shipping from booksellers listed on Amazon.com who are reducing inventory after the initial rush.

Salt Lake CITY Library has 3 copies, all of which are due back early next week and there are AT THE MOMENT no holds!!! [http://catalog.slcpl.org/search/searchr ... searchid=1 – scroll down to Item 7.]

Salt Lake COUNTY Library, unfortunately, has only 1 copy which is checked out and has 4 holds.owever, our policy has always been that first-time attendees are not expected to have read the materials.


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DESCRIPTION OF OUR FOCUS BOOK

The Terror Years is Lawrence Wright’s sequel to The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Knopf 8/82006) which won the Pulitzer Prize and was selected Best Book of The Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, Newsweek Magazine and The Chicago Tribune.

The Terror Years, in ten powerful pieces first published Lawrence Wright 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 cult-like 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.


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AUTHOR BIO

Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine.

He is a graduate of Tulane University, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the American University in Cairo, where he taught English and received an M.A. in Applied Linguistics in 1969. Upon his return to the U.S. in 1971, Wright began his writing career at the Race Relations Reporter in Nashville, Tennessee. Two years later, he went to work for Southern Voices, a publication of the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, Georgia, and began to freelance for various national magazines. In 1980, Wright returned to Texas to work for Texas Monthly. He also became a contributing editor to Rolling Stone. In December 1992, he joined the staff of The New Yorker, where he has published a number of prize-winning articles, including two National Magazine Awards.

Wright is the co-writer (with director Ed Zwick and Menno Meyjes) of The Siege, starring Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, and Annette Bening, which appeared in November 1998. He also wrote the script of the Showtime movie, Noriega: God’s Favorite, directed by Roger Spottiswoode and starring Bob Hoskins, which aired in April 2000.

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.

Wright co-produced a 2015 documentary for HBO, Going Clear, based on his book of the same name. It won many awards, including the Alfred I. du-Pont-Columbia award and three Emmys, including best documentary.

Wright is currently producing (with director Alex Gibney and show runner Dan Futterman) a dramatic television series for Hulu based on his book The Looming Tower.

Wright is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Society of American Historians. He also serves as the keyboard player in the Austin-based blues band, WhoDo.


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RSVP’S REQUESTED BY NEXT FRIDAY

In accordance with our quorum-revision policy of 6/12/2013, instead of waiting until the last week before each monthly meeting to request RSVP’s and canceling if we do not have our minimum quorum of six, RSVP’s are requested in our first-of-the-monthly-cycle weekly e-mail.

Those who have RSVP’d will be informed immediately when we reach six so that they can proceed to read the materials with assurance that a discussion will take place.

If there are not six RSVP’s by 11:59 pm next Friday, then next week’s weekly e-mail will announce that the 11/16/2016 meeting is cancelled.


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SKYPE PARTICIPATION

Non-Utah residents (and residents who are out of town) are invited to participate in our meeting via Skype.

If you would like to do so, please press your reply button and type “request participation via Skype” and we will contact you to make appropriate arrangements.


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We hope to see all of you on Oct 19th to discuss “Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why.”

Your friend,

John K.

PS -- To un-subscribe, please press "reply" and type "deletion requested."

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