Headshots: Profiles, Essays, and Reflections

by Lawrence Wright

Thirty never-before collected essays—many of them profiles—by the Pulitzer Prize–winning and bestselling author of The Looming Tower, Going Clear, and The Plague Year. These brilliant pieces reveal the broad spectrum of Wright’s cultural and political observations over the past thirty five years

Spanning more than thirty five years of Lawrence Wright’s reporting for The New Yorker, Texas Monthly, Rolling Stone and other magazines, these pieces remind us what a brilliant observer Wright has been of institutions, of political maneuverings, and of people—dangerous, eccentric, or beloved.

Some of the essays

ORPHANS OF JONESTOWN (1993): A profile of Jim Jones’ two sons. In 1978, when they left Jonestown to play in a basketball tournament, their father ordered the deaths of everyone they knew and loved, leaving them alone in a society uncomprehending of their experience.

A RAPIST’S HOMECOMING (1995): The ethical dilemma of a prison therapist, concerned that her patient—about to be released—could attack again.

A LIVING DOLL (1988): A very personal column. How the author relates to his 5-year-old daughter through her dolls and stuffed animals.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF RICHARD BRAUTIGAN (1985): An incisive look at the 1960’s and 1970’s literary icon.

CAPTURED ON FILM (2006): Dissident filmmakers in Syria.

SPACE CADET (1981): How a sanitary engineer combined her expertise and career with her love of space exploration and NASA.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE COURTOOM (2022): Should animals have legal rights?

And many A profile of the great spitball pitcher, Gaylord Perry; a look at how a Pentecostal Texas cattle farmer and an orthodox rabbi from Jerusalem come together over the End of Days; a 2006 essays detailing an attack in Gaza that mirrors the tragedies occurring today; a profile of Jamaal Khashoggi; one of Jimmy Carter; and a group of essays that deal with Wright’s life as a father.

This is an important collection that will demand attention, and a stirring overview of an extraordinary career.

Genres: Essays

416 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication March 7, 2028

About the author

Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. He has won a Pulitzer Prize and three National Magazine Awards.

His latest book, The Human Scale , is a sweeping, timely thriller, in which a Palestinian-American FBI agent teams up with a hardline Israeli cop to solve the murder of the Israeli police chief in Gaza. According to The New York Times, “Wright succeeds in this complex, deeply felt work.”

He is the author of 11 nonfiction books. His book about the rise of al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Knopf, 2006), was published to immediate and widespread acclaim. It has been translated into 25 languages and won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. It was made into a series for Hulu in 2018, starring Jeff Daniels, Alec Baldwin, and Tahar Rahim.

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (Knopf, 2013) was a New York Times bestseller. Wright and director Alex Gibney turned it into an HBO documentary, which won three Emmys, including best documentary. Wright and Gibney also teamed up to produce another Emmy-winning documentary, for Showtime, about the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi.

In addition to The Human Scale, Wright has three other novels: Noriega: God’s Favorite (Simon and Schuster, 2000) which was made into a Showtime movie starring Bob Hoskins; The End of October (Knopf, 2020), a bestseller about a viral pandemic that came out right at the beginning of COVID; Mr. Texas (Knopf, 2023), which has been optioned as a limited streaming series.

In 2006, Wright premiered his first one-man play, “My Trip to Al-Qaeda,” at The New Yorker Festival, which led to a sold-out six-week run off-Broadway, before traveling to Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. It was made into a documentary film of the same name, directed by Alex Gibney, for HBO.

Before he wrote the novel, Wright wrote and performed a one-man show also called The Human Scale, about the standoff between Israel and Hamas over the abduction of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. The Public Theater in New York produced the play, which ran for a month off-Broadway in 2010, before moving to the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv. Many of the ideas developed in that play later evolved into the novel of the same name, published 15 years later.

In addition to his one-man productions, Wright has written five other plays that have enjoyed productions around the country, including Camp David, about the Carter, Begin, and Sadat summit in 1978; and Cleo, about the making of the movie Cleopatra.

Wright is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Society of American Historians, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also serves as the keyboard player in the Austin-based blues band, WhoDo.

Reviews

[Jerry Edward Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawrence Wright is an accomplished writer in print and for the screen. The Pulitzer Prize is merely one of his many writing awards. The Oklahoma City, Oklahoma native is particularly well known for the articles published in The New Yorker magazine and many others. This new book collects many of Wright’s essays. But the book is much more than a collection of interesting stories. The book is actually a study in the way the accomplished writer goes about the real craft of journalism. The extended introduction is an explanation of Wright’s approach to the craft of journalism. Wright explains in real detail how this writer comes to realize that there is a credible story in the subject under examination. The ritualistic Satanic murders of the 1980s and 1990s is one such topic Wright relates how he covered it as a journalist. But, the essays that follow are intriguing in themselves. The first essay addresses the baseball career of Gaylord Perry, a career that goes from that of a baseball outlaw to the more relaxed and comfortable baseball superstar. Of course, the essay does examine Perry’s adoption of, control of, and absolute distinction with the “spitter,” an unorthodox pitcher’s tool. The final essay – itself a truly fitting concluding piece -- is about Jimmy Carter. I was, of course, immediately drawn to see how Wright could distinguish his writing on such a well known and frequently covered national personality. The essay essentially covers the development of Wright’s stage play, Camp David, about Carter, Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin and their sensitive negotiations leading to the Camp David Accord. This is likely the signal accomplishment of Carter’s one term presidency in the 1970s. But, the essay takes a somewhat unexpected turn. Wright observes that he had come to admire both Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter much more than almost anyone else in public life. This final essay is, in reality, all about this admirable couple and their enduring relationship. The essay could never have been solely about Jimmy Carter. The other essays deserve every bit the careful reading that these two will get. A handy index will fortunately prove to be an indispensable tool to selecting what one wants to read and when. This book is highly recommended to all general readers.