From prison, Qutb regenerated the secret apparatus and Saudi Arabia supplied the group with arms and money. Qutb was betrayed, however, and six months after he was released from prison, he was arrested again for a plot to overthrow the Egyptian government. He was sentenced to death by hanging for his radical views and accepted his fate with pride. His anger inspired Zawahiri and, in due course, influenced Osama bin Laden. Qutb's death paved the way for more Rabie al-Zawahiri, a professor. His son, Ayman, grew up to be a rebellious, self-righteous man with "headstrong qualities that would invariably be associated with him in the future and that would propel him into conflict with nearly everyone he would meet" (37). Zawahiri was the perfect man to put Qutb's vision into action. At 15 years of age, he formed an underground cell "devoted to overthrowing the government and establishing an Islamic state" (37). Zawahiri's cell grew in number and strength and, in 1973, the movement's plan was to kill the "main leaders of the country" (49). Upon Anwar Sadat's assassination, Zawahiri was arrested, though he denied any involvement in the incident. In prison, Zawahiri became a "violent and implacable extremist"...

At the age of 34, Zawahiri was the "pious, bitter, and determined" (60) leader of an underground Islamist cell.
Wright also connects the dots to Osama bin Laden, son of Mohammed bin Laden. Bin Laden becomes something more than a man holed up in the Afghanistan mountain range. Wright allows us to see him, and his past, more clearly. When Osama bin Laden was 14, he was influenced by a gym teacher and became a young man that was "sad and frustrated about the situation in Palestine in particular, and the Arab and Muslim world in general" (77). Wright asserts that the myth of the Arab fighters was greater than the army itself and it was only by chance that the group emerged as a viable terrorist group.

Wright's book, up until Chapter 12, proves to be a page-turner I that it makes the complicated world of terrorism easy to understand. While it makes the face of terror easier to see, it allows us to see how such radical trains of thought come to fruition. By focusing on the minds of a few major players, Wright captures an identity or puts a face on terrorists that suddenly makes them more real to us. We can see each of these men living their daily lives, growing into the…