A Journey into the Future of America

God Save Texas

'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 is a journey through the most controversial state in America. It 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 Italy's. 
 
The Texas economic model of low taxes and minimal regulation has produced extraordinary growth but also striking income disparities. Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. And Wright's profound portrait of the state not only reflects the United States back as it is, but as it was and as it might be. 
 
Completed as Texas battles to rebuild after the devastating storm of summer 2017, Lawrence Wright's new book manages to be both delighted and appalled by the place he has lived much of his life.

Al Qaeda's Road to 9/11

The Looming Tower

Now a major Amazon Prime Video series starring Alec Baldwin and Jeff Daniels

THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING BESTSELLER, NOW AN ACCLAIMED TV SERIES 
 
This is the definitive account of the run-up to 9/11: from the man who lit the spark of radical Islam in 1948, to those who built up a terror network, and to the FBI agent whose warnings of 'something big' coming were ignored until the Twin Towers fell. 
 
'The Looming Tower is a thriller. And it's a tragedy, too' The New York Times 
 
'The most detailed (and thrilling) account we have of the events that led to the destruction of the Twin Towers' Observer, Books of the Year 
 
'Possibly the best book yet written on the rise of al-Qaeda ... beautifully written and wonderfully compelling' William Dalrymple 
 
'We meet some formidable schemers and killers ... fabulists crazed with blood and death' Martin Amis

Wright's brilliantly constructed narrative is head and shoulders above the rest. He knows important parts of the Muslim world (including Saudi Arabia) at first hand, he understands the motors of Islamist militancy ... Moreover, he is a fine writer with an eye for the telling detail.  Even those who think they know the story intimately will feel they are reading it anew

One of the best and most important books of recent years. A masterful combination of reporting and writing

Lawrence Wright's integrity and diligence as a reporter shine through every page of this riveting narrative

Lawrence Wright is a staff writer for the New Yorker and a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. He is the author of Twins and Remembering Satan, and the co-writer of the movie The Siege.

Lawrence Wright

A devastating analysis ... Wright is a master of knitting together complex narratives ... A story about hubris and division, complacency and insularity, but most of all precariousness.

In his characteristically rigorous and engrossing style, Wright documents innumerable episodes of ineptitude and malfeasance ... Maddening and sobering - as comprehensive an account of the first year of the pandemic as we've yet seen.

Wright explains political mistakes and scientific breakthroughs, but The Plague Year has a more intimate register, too, in its record of how the virus upended everyday lives. The most heartbreaking moments are those that juxtapose ordinary people falling ill with the incompetence, negligence or politicking of the Trump White House ... The Plague Year suggests it was even worse than we remembered or realised at the time.

A virtuoso feat ... [Wright has] given us a book of panoramic breadth, [ranging] from science to politics to economics to culture with a commanding scrutiny, managing to surprise us about even those episodes we have only recently lived through and thought we knew well. The story he tells is immediate and often piercingly intimate ... Wright's storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.

In his characteristic style, Mr Wright provides many small sketches of people touched by Covid-19 - from whizzy scientists like Barney Graham to victims like 96-year-old Jim Miller, a D-Day veteran who died of the disease in a cruelly mismanaged home for old soldiers. But the book's main character is Mr Trump, and its main service is in weighing his responsibility for the disaster.

Arresting, lean-limbed, immersive ... Rich with peerless reportage and incisive critique ... Translates the complexities of epidemiology into plain English ... Wright is at his commanding best.

Insightful ... Indispensable as a coronavirus compendium. Very little escapes Wright's notice, and he is adept at placing the ongoing story in an enlightening context.

Taut, thriller-like, The Plague Year captures the chaos and courage of this unprecedented era that's forever changed us.

By far the best book yet on COVID-19 ... [An] exemplary chronicle [with] countless examples of hope, sacrifice, and heroic feats. Wright's interviews with experts in virology, economics, public health, history, politics, and medicine are enlightening ... Wright is at his finest here in frontline research, expert analysis, and lucid writing.

[An] incredibly-crafted telling ... [Wright] is an earnest prober, with sober-minded curiosity ... [He] provides a well-wrought map covering the institutions and politicians that failed America during this stretch of the pandemic [and] crucially highlights those that also saved us - the first responders and the reasonable.

America in the Time of Covid

The story of The Plague Year 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

Praise for The Plague Year

A devastating analysis ... Wright is a master of knitting together complex narratives ... A story about hubris and division, complacency and insularity, but most of all precariousness.

In his characteristically rigorous and engrossing style, Wright documents innumerable episodes of ineptitude and malfeasance ... Maddening and sobering - as comprehensive an account of the first year of th ...

Wright explains political mistakes and scientific breakthroughs, but The Plague Year has a more intimate register, too, in its record of how the virus upended everyday lives. The most heartbreaking moments ar ...

A devastating analysis ... Wright is a master of knitting together complex narratives ... A story about hubris and division, complacency and insularity, but most of all precariousness.

In his characteristically rigorous and engrossing style, Wright documents innumerable episodes of ineptitude and malfeasance ... Maddening and sobering - as comprehensive an account of the first year of th ...

Wright explains political mistakes and scientific breakthroughs, but The Plague Year has a more intimate register, too, in its record of how the virus upended everyday lives. The most heartbreaking moments ar ...

A devastating analysis ... Wright is a master of knitting together complex narratives ... A story about hubris and division, complacency and insularity, but most of all precariousness.

In his characteristically rigorous and engrossing style, Wright documents innumerable episodes of ineptitude and malfeasance ... Maddening and sobering - as comprehensive an account of the first year of th ...

Wright explains political mistakes and scientific breakthroughs, but The Plague Year has a more intimate register, too, in its record of how the virus upended everyday lives. The most heartbreaking moments ar ...

Books by Lawrence Wright

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter