Reading List

Authors Like Lawrence Wright

After the attacks of 11 September 2001, Lawrence Wright spent the next five years travelling to report a single book, interviewing more than six hundred people, members of Osama bin Laden's family among them. The Looming Tower (2006) does not open in New York but in Greeley, Colorado, in 1949, with an Egyptian educator named Sayyid Qutb recoiling from American life; it won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2007. Wright had known the region since his twenties, when he taught English at the American University in Cairo, and he has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. He did the same thing to the Church of Scientology in Going Clear (2013), to Camp David in Thirteen Days in September (2014) and to his own state in God Save Texas (2018). What readers come to him for is the combination: a closed world, years of interviews, and a story told through people rather than argument. The writers below share that method — most of them at the same magazine — and several work the same ground: terrorism, the secret state, and belief that turns into control.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Investigative journalism · Narrative nonfiction · The war on terror · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Lawrence Wright, start with Steve Coll, whose Ghost Wars covers the same years from inside the CIA. For his method applied elsewhere, read Patrick Radden Keefe and David Grann, his colleagues at The New Yorker. For the wars that followed 2001, Dexter Filkins and Jane Mayer. And for Going Clear, Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven.

10 authors like Lawrence Wright

01
Same years · Closest match

Steve Coll

American · b. 1958 · Reporter · Pulitzer 2005

Coll was a reporter and editor at The Washington Post, a staff writer at The New Yorker from 2005 to 2023 and dean of Columbia's journalism school from 2013 to 2022. Ghost Wars, a history of the CIA in Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion to 10 September 2001, won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2005. The Bin Ladens (2008) follows the family, Directorate S won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Achilles Trap (2024) is about Saddam Hussein and American intelligence.

The book that sits beside The Looming Tower on every shelf about 9/11. Wright tells the story through the men who made al-Qaeda; Coll tells it through the agencies that watched them, and the two books answer each other's questions. Coll is the more institutional writer, Wright the better storyteller, and together they are the fullest account of how the attacks came about.

— Lisanne
Every book by Steve Coll →
02
Same magazine · Same method

Patrick Radden Keefe

American · b. 1976 · Reporter · Baillie Gifford Prize 2021

Keefe has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2012. Say Nothing builds a history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland around the 1972 abduction of Jean McConville and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Orwell Prize; Empire of Pain, about the Sackler family and OxyContin, won the Baillie Gifford Prize in 2021. His latest book, London Falling, came out in 2026.

The closest match in method: a closed, secretive world reconstructed over years from interviews and documents, and told as a story with characters rather than as an argument. Keefe is the more novelistic of the two, with a sharper eye for a scene; Wright is broader and more interested in ideas. Say Nothing is the natural next book after The Looming Tower: another history of political violence told through the people who carried it out.

— Lisanne

Every book by Patrick Radden Keefe →

03
The wars that came after

Dexter Filkins

American · b. 1961 · Reporter · National Book Critics Circle Award 2008

Filkins reported from Afghanistan and Iraq for The New York Times, was part of the Times team that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, and joined The New Yorker in 2011. The Forever War, built from his years as a correspondent in both countries, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction.

The Looming Tower ends on 11 September; The Forever War picks up the story where it leaves off, in Kabul and then Baghdad. Filkins writes from the ground rather than from the archive, in short, vivid episodes, so it is a different kind of book — but it is the best account of what Wright's subject led to.

— Lisanne

Every book by Dexter Filkins →

04
The secret state, at home

Jane Mayer

American · b. 1955 · Reporter

Mayer has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. The Dark Side traces how the American government came to adopt torture and secret detention after 2001, and won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize; Dark Money investigates the political network built by the Koch brothers. With Jill Abramson she wrote Strange Justice (1994), on the confirmation of Clarence Thomas.

Wright shows how al-Qaeda was built; Mayer shows what Washington built in response, from the same kind of sources — officials, lawyers and documents that were never meant to be read. She is more prosecutorial than Wright and less interested in character, but The Dark Side is the necessary second half of the story.

— Lisanne

Every book by Jane Mayer →

05
Belief that turns into control

Jon Krakauer

American · b. 1954 · Reporter

Krakauer is best known for Into the Wild (1996) and Into Thin Air, his account of the 1996 disaster on Everest. Under the Banner of Heaven investigates a double murder committed by two brothers in a fundamentalist Mormon offshoot and the history of the faith behind it; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disputed the book, and a church spokesman said Krakauer was “no historian”.

The closest book to Going Clear: a closed belief system examined from the outside, with its founder's history set against what its followers did. Krakauer writes with more open anger than Wright and takes fewer pains to be fair to the institution, which some readers will prefer. Wright is better on how a church is run; Krakauer is better on what it feels like to believe.

— Lisanne

Every book by Jon Krakauer →

06
The New Yorker method, in history

David Grann

American · b. 1967 · Reporter

Grann has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2003. The Lost City of Z (2009) follows the explorer Percy Fawcett into the Amazon; Killers of the Flower Moon reconstructs the murders of Osage people in 1920s Oklahoma and the early FBI's investigation, and was filmed by Martin Scorsese in 2023. The Wager is about an eighteenth-century British shipwreck and mutiny.

Grann does with archives what Wright does with interviews: a crime or a disaster rebuilt so completely that it reads like a novel, without anything invented. Killers of the Flower Moon also shares Wright's interest in institutions — the FBI's beginnings are half the book — and in a buried American story that changes how you see the rest.

— Lisanne

Every book by David Grann →

07
The same patience, over decades

Robert Caro

American · b. 1935 · Biographer · Pulitzer 1975

Caro's The Power Broker, a biography of the New York planner Robert Moses, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. He has spent most of the time since on The Years of Lyndon Johnson, four volumes so far, of which Master of the Senate (2002) won the National Book Award and a second Pulitzer. Working (2019) is a short book about how he researches and writes.

Caro works in decades where Wright works in years, but they share the conviction that power is understood only through exhaustive reporting on the people who hold it. Read Working next to The Looming Tower's endnotes and you see the same habit: go back to the source, then go back again.

— Lisanne

Every book by Robert Caro →

08
Political violence, explained

Philip Gourevitch

American · b. 1961 · Reporter · National Book Critics Circle Award 1998

Gourevitch is a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and edited The Paris Review from 2005 to 2010. His first book, about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Guardian First Book Award. With Errol Morris he wrote Standard Operating Procedure (2008), on the photographs from Abu Ghraib.

Like Wright, Gourevitch asks the hardest question about political violence — how ordinary people came to do it — and answers it with interviews rather than theory. He is more openly moral than Wright and writes in the first person, but the book has the same effect: a catastrophe that seemed incomprehensible becomes something you can follow step by step.

— Lisanne

Every book by Philip Gourevitch →

09
Years inside one place

Katherine Boo

American · b. 1964 · Reporter · National Book Award 2012

Boo's reporting for The Washington Post on group homes for the mentally disabled was the basis of the paper's Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2000, and she has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2003. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, about the families of Annawadi, a settlement beside Mumbai's airport, won the National Book Award in 2012.

Boo shares Wright's willingness to spend years inside a single world before writing it, and his refusal to step into the frame. Her subject is poverty, not terrorism, but the result is the same: a closed place, opened up through a few people followed closely, with no thesis laid over the top.

— Lisanne

Every book by Katherine Boo →

10
History through individual lives

Isabel Wilkerson

American · b. 1961 · Reporter · Pulitzer 1994

Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1994 as Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times. The Warmth of Other Suns, a history of the Great Migration of Black Americans out of the South told through three people who made the journey, drew on interviews with more than a thousand people and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Caste followed in 2020.

The writer on this list who makes Wright's structural move most clearly: a vast historical story carried by a handful of real people, followed in detail. The Looming Tower does it with Qutb, Zawahiri, bin Laden and the FBI's John O'Neill; The Warmth of Other Suns does it with three migrants over half a century.

— Lisanne

Every book by Isabel Wilkerson →

Where to start if you loved Lawrence Wright

If you loved The Looming Tower, read Steve Coll.

Ghost Wars: the same years, seen from inside the CIA.

If you loved Going Clear, read Jon Krakauer.

Under the Banner of Heaven — a faith, its founder and what its followers did.

If you want the method on new ground, read Patrick Radden Keefe.

Say Nothing: the Troubles, rebuilt from the people who lived them.

If you want what came after 9/11, read Dexter Filkins.

The Forever War, from Kabul to Baghdad.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Lawrence Wright

Who should I read if I love Lawrence Wright?

Steve Coll first: Ghost Wars (2004) covers the CIA in Afghanistan up to 10 September 2001 and is the natural companion to The Looming Tower. Patrick Radden Keefe and David Grann, his colleagues at The New Yorker, use the same method on other subjects. Dexter Filkins and Jane Mayer cover the wars and the secret policies that followed 2001, and Jon Krakauer is the closest match for Going Clear.

What books are like The Looming Tower?

Steve Coll's Ghost Wars (2004) and The Bin Ladens (2008) cover the same history from the American and the Saudi side. Dexter Filkins's The Forever War (2008) continues the story in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Jane Mayer's The Dark Side (2008) follows Washington's response. Wright's own The Terror Years (2016) collects his New Yorker reporting on the same subject.

What should I read after Going Clear?

Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven (2003) is the closest book: a closed faith, its history and a crime committed in its name. Janet Reitman's Inside Scientology (2011) covers the same church. Wright has said he received a great many letters threatening legal action from the church's lawyers and celebrity members while he was working on the book, and the church disputes its account.

Is The Looming Tower a TV series?

Yes. Hulu adapted it as a ten-episode drama in 2018, starring Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim and Alec Baldwin. Going Clear became a documentary by Alex Gibney in 2015, which won three Emmys including the award for best documentary.

Does Lawrence Wright write fiction?

Yes. Besides his nonfiction he has published the novels God's Favorite (2000), The End of October (2020), about a pandemic, Mr. Texas (2023) and The Human Scale (2025), which grew out of his 2010 one-man play. He has also written plays, including My Trip to Al-Qaeda and Camp David, and his nonfiction account of COVID-19, The Plague Year, came out in 2021.

What is the difference between Lawrence Wright and Robert Caro?

Wright spends several years on a defined subject — al-Qaeda, Scientology, a peace summit — and moves on. Caro has spent most of his working life on one biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, now four volumes. Both build their books from interviews and documents rather than argument, and both won the Pulitzer Prize for them.

Footnotes

  1. Lawrence Wright — About
  2. The Monthly Interview: Lawrence Wright — Washington Monthly
  3. Lawrence Wright — Wikipedia
  4. Steve Coll — Wikipedia
  5. Patrick Radden Keefe — Wikipedia
  6. Dexter Filkins — Wikipedia
  7. Jon Krakauer — Wikipedia
  8. Katherine Boo — Wikipedia

List last reviewed 15 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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