Garry Wills

Garry Wills (born May 22, 1934) is a prolific author, journalist, and historian specializing in American politics, American political history and ideology and the Roman Catholic Church. Classically trained at Jesuit schools, he is proficient in Greek and Latin, but not Hebrew. He has written nearly 40 books and has been a frequent reviewer for the New York Review of Books since 1973.^[1]

A conservative and early protégé of William F. Buckley, Jr as a young man, Wills became increasingly liberal through the 1960s, driven by his coverage of the civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War movements. Although a practicing Catholic, he has been an excoriating critic of the Vatican and its policies and theology.

Life and career

Wills was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He 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

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 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]

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 criticisms were denounced as unfair by Rabbi David G. Dalin in the book The Myth of Hitler's Pope.

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.

Books

Chesterton: Man and Mask, Doubleday, 1961. ISBN 978-0-385-50290-0
Animals of the Bible by Garry Wills (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 (bio by Garry Wills)|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 (bio by Garry Wills)|Saint Augustine (1999), ISBN 0-670-88610-6
Saint Augustine's Childhood (2001), ISBN 0670030015
Saint Augustine's Memory (2002), ISBN 0670031275
Saint Augustine's Sin (2003), ISBN 0670032417
Saint Augustine's Conversion (2004), ISBN 0670033529
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 (bio by Garry Wills)|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
Bomb Power (2010), ISBN 1594202400

References

^ Wills page at the NYRB
^ ^a ^b Allen, 28 November 2008
^ Leonard, 1970
^ "Pulitzer Prize Winners: General Non-Fiction" (web). pulitzer.org. Retrieved 2008-03-10.

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.