Lawrence Wright's Reading List

"It had been weighing down a shelf for years, but I was in a gloomy mood about our politics and thought it might help me understand the historical parallels. Shirer was on the ground as Nazi power reached its heights... It is an unsettling, shocking book, but a thrilling piece of reporting."

"I was writing a novel about politics and this is one of the great ones... the precision of detail made his Irish Catholic city immediately believable and wonderful fun."

"I'm surprised so few people read Liebling, whose book "The Earl of Louisiana"... was among the ones that inspired me to set my sights on The New Yorker. He's a great reporter but he also has a wicked eye for detail."

"A few years ago three of my friends and I decided to read "The Denial of Death," by Ernest Becker. It was too intimidating to tackle alone... that experience of meeting once a week in a beer garden to talk over our fears and the meaning of our lives was a bracing and bonding experience."

"I love Ben Hecht's memoir, "A Child of the Century," and he was crucial to some of Hollywood's greatest movies."

""Gods, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America," by Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, which provides an incisive look at the rise of extremism on the right. It's a chilling tale."