Lawrence Wright Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Lawrence Wright was born August 2, 1947 and is a screenwriter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, and staff writer for The New Yorker magazine.

Lawrence was born in Oklahoma City, he came to live in Texas when his dad was hired by a bank in Abilene. He spent his teenage years in Dallas, where attended high school, graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School in the year 1965. In the year 2009, he was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame.

Lawrence graduated from Tulane University, as well as the American University of Cairo. Here, he taught English and got an MA in Applied Linguistics in the year 1969.

Upon returning to the US in the year 1971, he started his writing career as the Race Relations Reporter in Nashville, Tennessee. Two years after that, he began working for Southern Voices, a publication of the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta. He also started freelancing for different national magazines. He returned to Texas, in the year 1980, in order to work for Texas Monthly and became a contributing editor to Rolling Stone.

Lawrence says that he wrote his book “God Save Texas” because his editor at the New Yorker asked him to explain Texas to him since the editor doesn’t understand why Lawrence lives there. Lawrence says it is something that he has wondered about, too. He is very fond of Texas though.

While writing his second novel, “The End of October”, he says that he used reporting methods for his new virus book. He conducted interviews with military experts, government officials, epidemiologists, and scientists.

Lawrence believes that when he writes anything, be it a play, a movie, a book, or a magazine article, it is all storytelling, with reality being the common denominator that binds it all.

Usually, when he writes about a complicated subject, it involves a world usually. Maybe it’s the world of Al Qaeda, peacemakingScientology, or counter-terrorism. Lawrence does his best to find emblematic beasts of burdens, or what he refers to as “donkeys”, that are able to carry the reader through the world. They wind up serving a different purpose than the type of person that is the subject of a magazine profile, one that is a celebrity or is fascinating.

Lawrence is the keyboardist in WhoDo, an Austin-based blues band. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Society of American Historians.

For his articles, he has won two National Magazine Awards. “The Looming Tower” won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction, the Lionel Gelber Award For Nonfiction, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, and it was named one of the one hundred best non-fiction books ever written. “Going Clear” won the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award.

His book “Going Clear” was adapted into a documentary for HBO, which was released in the year 2015 and was co-produced by Wright. “The Looming Tower” was adapted into a series on Hulu.

His debut novel, called “God’s Favorite”, was released in the year 2000. He writes non-fiction books, as well as historical and thriller novels.

“God’s Favorite” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2000. Panama during the nerve-racking, final days of Manuel Antonio Noriega, its legendary dictator.

Christmas in the year 1989. Tony Noriega’s demons are about to finally catch up to him. A former friend of Oliver North, President Bush, and Fidel Castro, this universally reviled strongman is on the run from the Colombian mob, the U.S. Congress, a host of political rivals, and the Justice Department.

In Tony’s desperation, he looks for salvation from any and all quarters: God, a voodoo priest, Satan, and even the spirits of all his murdered enemies. With a million-dollar price tag on his head and some twenty thousand American soldiers on his trail, he is quickly running low on options.

Readers enjoyed this one, and had a tough time stepping away from it, as it is a fast paced read that is loaded with irony based off true events. The book is philosophical, humorous, and a bit educational. Fans found themselves interested in the actual history behind this story. The version of Noriega presented in the novel is interesting, mysterious, and brutal, and was the most interesting part of the novel.

“The End of October” is the second stand alone novel and was released in the year 2020. Dr. Henry Parsons, an unlikely hero, races in order to find the origins as well as the cure to a mysterious new killer virus while it brings the world right to its knees.

Forty-seven people, at an internment camp in Indonesia, are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. Harry Parsons, an epidemiologist and microbiologist, travels there on behalf of World Health Organization to investigate the matter, what he discovers is going to soon have staggering repercussions all over the globe. One infected guy is on his way to join all the millions of worshippers in the annual Hajj to Mecca.

Henry joins forces with a doctor and a Saudi prince in an attempt to quarantine the entire host of pilgrims in this holy city. A Russian emigre, the woman that has risen to deputy director of U.S. Homeland Security, rushes to mount a response to what very well could be an act of biowarfare.

The already fraying global relations start snapping, one after another, in the face of this pandemic. Jill, Henry’s wife, as well as their kids face diminishing odds of survival in Atlanta. The disease quickly makes its way across America, dismantling institutions: religious, scientific, and governmental and it decimates the population.

Readers found this to be a gripping suspense novel, and is quickly paced, exciting, and is presented in such a way that is much too believable. This is quite a fascinating glimpse in what happens in times of a pandemic and crisis and is simply a fun page turner. Fans were impressed by the amount of scientific detail and the corresponding geopolitical dilemmas presented in the novel. The story line, while it is disturbing, is quite engaging, and the writing is always engaging.