Lawrence Wright’s film tells a brief history of al Qaeda and how its leaders became who they are, citing their imprisonment, torture, humiliation and their general hatred of the West. It also chronicles the United States military engagement in the Muslim world after 9/11. He draws on his own extensive experience interviewing, studying, and interacting with both Islamic terrorists and the general population of the Muslim world. Wright gathered much of the information for the film while writing the Looming Tower, a book that went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 2007.