Lawrence Wright

Wright’s awesome imagination is matched by his authenticity. The End of October is prescient and stunning.

A maniacal page-turner. [A] sweeping, authoritative, and genuinely intelligent thriller . . . It read[s] as if it’s been shot out of a cannon. [Wright] offers the joy of competence—his own as a writer, and the scientific and moral competence of many of the characters he’s invented . . . Everywhere there is clear writing about pestilence and science . . . Wright’s novel is here as a real if solemn entertainment, a stay against boredom and a kind of offered prayer for the best in us to rise to the surface.

[Wright’s] book shows that our new reality, a surprise and a shock to most of us, is actually following a script written far in advance, with all the words and phrases that we never used six weeks ago—attack rate, viral load, cytokine storm—now part of our everyday speech . . . The prescience of The End of October is undeniable . . . Wright is as amiable a tour guide as you could hope for through the darkest terrain of recent history.

A thriller for our times . . . Like all good thrillers, The End of October diverts us from the real world while keeping a firm base there, letting us imagine not only disaster but the ways out of it.

Some works of fiction seem ripped from the headlines. Others anticipate the news, providing a prophetic vision of our future. Lawrence Wright's new novel, The End of October, belongs in the rare second category.

As a distinguished journalist and author of several highly successful factual books, Wright approached this just as he would any other journalistic assignment, carrying out detailed research and preparation. As he went from expert to expert he heard clear warnings that something like the coronavirus would happen. It was a question not so much of ‘if’ but ‘when’, and crucially, many asked how prepared governments would be to cope with it . . . Is truth stranger than fiction, as the American writer Mark Twain once suggested? Now we all have a chance to judge for ourselves.

So uncannily timed that any moment now some conspiracy theorist will tweet that our real-life pandemic is a hoax dreamed up by Wright’s publicist.

This is the book you need to read this spring.

Holy crap, Lawrence Wright predicted the future . . . His medical thriller is truly a story for our times.

Is this really a work of fiction? Or was it a prophecy?

Featuring accounts of past plagues and pandemics, descriptions of pathogens and how they work, and dark notes about global warming, the book produces deep shudders . . . A disturbing, eerily timed novel.

[A] multifaceted thriller . . . Wright pulls few punches and imbues even walk-on characters with enough humanity that their fate will matter to readers. This timely literary page-turner shows Wright is on a par with the best writers in the genre.

Essential reading not just for Texans, but for anyone who wants to understand how one state changed the trajectory of the country . . . Wright is one of the most talented journalists Texas has ever produced, and God Save Texas is him at his best. It’s a thoughtful, beautifully written book.

[A] compelling and insightful potpourri of history, encounters, and observations . . . Wright has managed to sew together a patchwork quilt of a narrative into a substantive State of the state.

Wright, a lifelong Texan, knows his way around the state’s contradictions, from its wild borderlands to its craziest legislators. His Lone Star biography is important, timely, and most important, riveting.

This is a funny, pointed love letter to Texas, at once elegiac and clear-eyed. . . . [Wright is] a liberal who understands its conservative heart, and is at once besotted and repelled by Texas, amused and appalled by the greed, gumption and generosity of the place, its thumping crassness and subtle beauties.

Gripping . . . Whether you love Texas or hate Texas, you will likely find God Save Texas a very funny and a very informative book about a place unlike any other on the face of the earth.

The book’s 14 chapters dance between meditations on cities, culture, and politics, and all of them dive into what it means to be a Texan.

In the tradition of John Gunther’s 1947 landmark Inside U.S.A

Terrific . . . all-encompassing . . . [fueled] with literary tension . . . Wright’s words could speak for both Texas and America.

A fascinating look ahead through the lens of a singular state . . . Filled with larger-than-life Texas characters . . . For every Texas stereotype Wright explores, there’s something that blows it up.

A godsend . . . Thorough and concise . . . A brilliant analysis.

Omnivorous . . . Captures the full range of Texas in all its shame and glory . . . An illuminating primer for outsiders who may not live there but have a surfeit of opinions about those who do . . . [It’s] a testament to Wright’s formidable storytelling skills that a reader will encounter plenty of information without ever feeling lost.

An affecting memoir . . . Studded with . . . gems from the annals of Texas history.

Takes readers on a trek through Texas from the dawn of the Republic to the 2016 election, and Texas space, from Houston to Marfa, Dallas to El Paso. Along the way, God Save Texas maps both the light and dark soul of the state . . . Organized by themes and geography, Wright drills deep into Texas politics, arts, culture, big cities, border, and energy. Wright’s often-humorous voice becomes a trusted guide when discovering Texas’s lost stories as well as confronting painful tragedies.”

Masterful . . . An impressive ode to the Lone Star State . . . In a balanced tone, this narrative examines Texas’s historical, political, and social fabric that make the present tapestry, revealing a portrait of one of the most perplexing American states.

The grand scale of Texas, and the sheer range of its places and people—Houston to El Paso, the Panhandle to the Valley—is inevitably compelling to any writer, and Wright is happy just trying to get his arms around it all.”

One of the state’s most renowned writers takes readers deep into the heart of Texas. As a staffer for The New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Wright has illuminated a variety of intriguing subcultures. His native Texas is as exotic as any of them. He approaches his subject on a number of levels: as a stereotype, a movie myth, a cultural melting pot, a borderland, a harbinger of what is to come in an increasingly polarized and conservative country, and as a crucible that has shaped the character of a young writer who couldn't wait to escape but was drawn back.

Definitive: a narrative roadmap of how we got here, from the ashes of Lower Manhattan to the rise of the Islamic State . . . Few journalists understand [this] ever-evolving war better than Wright.

Vital prose . . . Wright has profiled the key players, detailed the major events, and tried with an almost forlorn kind of insistence to make sense of the senseless.

Wright has a gift only the most talented journalists possess: Whether unpacking large and complex entities like al-Qaeda or drawing in-depth profiles of FBI agents, he brings the world vividly to our fingertips.

“Exceedingly balanced, highly readable, and appropriately sober.”

It is brilliant penetrating scholarship. . . . Wright expertly captures every move of the three-way realpolitik chess match. By using each man's biography to illuminate the history of his respective nation, he not only chronicles Camp David but elucidates the issues that continue to plague the Middle East.

"An utterly necessary story...A feat of reporting."