Garry Wills

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Garry Wills (born May 22, 1934 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an author, journalist, and historian specializing in politics, ideology, and Roman Catholicism. Between 1961 and 2008 inclusive, he has written nearly 40 books. He has been a frequent reviewer for the New York Review of Books since 1973.^[1]

Contents 1 Biography 2 Public appraisal 3 Pius IX controversy 4 Awards 5 Selected books by Garry Wills 6 References 7 Bibliography 8 Further reading

[edit] Biography

Wills grew up in Michigan and Wisconsin and graduated from Campion High School, a Jesuit institution, in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin in 1951. He entered and then left the Jesuit order. William F. Buckley, Jr. hired him as a drama critic for National Review magazine at the age of 23. He received his PhD in classics from Yale in 1961. Wills has been awarded the honorary degree of L.H.D. by the College of the Holy Cross (1982) and by Bates College (1995).

Ideologically, he started out his adult life as a conservative, but through the 1960s he became more and more a liberal, driven by covering the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement.^[2]

His biography of president Richard M. Nixon, Nixon Agonistes (1970) landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents.

Wills joined the faculty of the history department at Northwestern University in 1980. He is now an emeritus professor.

Children: John Wills, Garry Wills, Lydia Wills

[edit] Public appraisal

The New York Times literary critic John Leonard said in 1970 that Wills "reads like a combination of H. L. Mencken, John Locke and Albert Camus."^[3]

The eminent Roman Catholic journalist, John L. Allen, Jr. considers Wills to be "perhaps the most distinguished Catholic intellectual in America over the last 50 years" (as of 2008).^[2]

[edit] Pius IX controversy

In 2000, Wills wrote Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit, a work critical of the papacy of Pius IX at a time when the Pope was being scheduled for beatification. Wills, along with author John Cornwell, was also critical of the papacy of Pius XII ; his virulent criticisms were denounced as unfair by Rabbi David G. Dalin in the book The Myth of Hitler's Pope.

[edit] Awards

He won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction^[4] for Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (1993), which describes the background and effect of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. He was awarded the National Medal for the Humanities in 1998. He has twice won the National Book Critics Circle Award, including as a cowinner for nonfiction in 1978 for Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence.

[edit] Selected books by Garry Wills

• Chesterton: Man and Mask, Doubleday, 1961. ISBN 978-0-385-50290-0
• Animals of the Bible (1962)
• Politics and Catholic Freedom (1964)
• Roman Culture: Weapons and the Man (1966), ISBN 0-8076-0367-8
• The Second Civil War: Arming for Armageddon (1968)
• Jack Ruby (1968), ISBN 0-306-80564-2
• Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-made Man (1970, 1979), ISBN 0-451-61750-9
• Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and Radical Religion (1972), ISBN 0-385-08970-8
• Values Americans Live By (1973), ISBN 0-405-04166-7
• Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (1978), ISBN 0-385-08976-7
• Confessions of a Conservative (1979), ISBN 0-385-08977-5
• At Button's (1979), ISBN 0-8362-6108-9
• Explaining America: The Federalist (1981), ISBN 0-385-14689-2
• The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power (1982), ISBN 0-316-94385-1
• Lead Time: A Journalist's Education (1983), ISBN 0-385-17695-3
• Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (1984), ISBN 0-385-17562-0
• Reagan's America: Innocents at Home (1987), ISBN 0-385-18286-4
• Under God: Religion and American Politics (1990), ISBN 0-671-65705-4
• Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (1992), ISBN 0-671-76956-1
• Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders (1994), ISBN 0-671-65702-X
• Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's Macbeth (1995), ISBN 0-19-508879-4
• John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity (1997), ISBN 0-684-80823-4
• Saint Augustine (1999), ISBN 0-670-88610-6
• A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government (1999), ISBN 0-684-84489-3
• Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit (2000), ISBN 0-385-49410-6
• Venice: Lion City: The Religion of Empire (2001), ISBN 0-684-87190-4
• Why I Am a Catholic (2002), ISBN 0-618-13429-8
• Mr. Jefferson's University (2002), ISBN 0-7922-6531-9
• James Madison (2002), ISBN 0-8050-6905-4
• Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power (2003), ISBN 0-618-34398-9
• Henry Adams and the Making of America (2005), ISBN 0-618-13430-1
• The Rosary: Prayer Comes Round (2005), ISBN 0-670-03449-5
• What Jesus Meant (2006), ISBN 0-670-03496-7
• What Paul Meant (2006), ISBN 0-670-03793-1
• Head and Heart: American Christianities (2007), ISBN 978-1594201462
• What the Gospels Meant (2008), ISBN 978-0-0670-01871-0

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Allen, John L, Jr. 'Poped out' Wills seeks broader horizons. National Catholic Reporter, 28 November 2008.
• Leonard, John. Books of the Times: Mr. Nixon as the Last Liberal. Review of Nixon Agonistes. New York Times, 15 October 1970.
• New York Review of Books. Wills page at the Website of the New York Review of Books.

[edit] Further reading

• Delbanco, Andrew. The Right-Wing Christians. New York Review of Books. Review of Wills's Head and Heart: American Christianities.
• New York Times. "Featured Author" page.
• New York Times. Index of articles about Garry Wills. (covers 1983 to 2008)
• Northwestern University. History Faculty of NW university
• Wills, Garry. Biography at Wills' faculty member Web pages at Northwestern University.
• Wills at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral A live conversation with Dean Alan Jones (archived)
• Wills, Garry. 13 October 2007. Lecture at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. to promote his book, Head and Heart.
• Thoughts on Nixon Agonistes
• Works by or about Garry Wills in libraries (WorldCat catalog)