<div>New York Times Bestseller: From a Pulitzer Prize winner, a “sparking and engaging book that everyone who cares about America’s history should read” (The Washington Post). In this book, one of today’s greatest historians offers a surprising new view of the greatest historian of the nineteenth century: Henry Adams. Garry Wills, author of Lincoln at Gettysburg, showcases Adams’s little-known but seminal study of the early United States and elicits from it fresh insights on the paradoxes that roil America to this day. Adams drew on his own southern fixation, his extensive foreign travel, his political service in Lincoln’s White House, and much more to invent the study of history as we know it. His nine-volume chronicle of America from 1800 to 1816 established new standards for employing archival sources, firsthand reportage, eyewitness accounts, and other techniques that have become the essence of modern history. Adams’s innovations went beyond the technical; he posited an essentially ironic view of the legacy of Jefferson and Madison. As is well known, they strove to shield the young country from “foreign entanglements,” a standing army, a central bank, and a federal bureaucracy, among other hallmarks of “big government.” Yet by the end of their tenures they had permanently entrenched all of these things in American society. This is the “American paradox” that defines us today: the idealized desire for isolation and political simplicity battling against the inexorable growth and intermingling of political, economic, and military forces. As Wills compellingly shows, the ironies spawned two centuries ago still inhabit our foreign policy and the widening schisms over economic and social policy. Ambitious in scope, nuanced in detail and argument, Henry Adams and the Making of America throws brilliant light on how history is made—in both senses of the term. “Felicitous prose and compelling argument.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Wills [is] incapable of writing a dull paragraph.” —Los Angeles Times</div>

Henry Adams and the Making of America

<div>An &ldquo;intellectually satisfying, and spiritually moving,&rdquo; argument for a questioning, conscience-driven faith, by a New York Times bestselling author (Booklist). Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills has been asked more than once why he remains in the Church, especially in the wake of his bestselling book Papal Sins, which examined the darker side of the religion&rsquo;s history. In Why I Am a Catholic, he offers some persuasive and heartfelt answers. Beginning with a reflection on his early experiences as a child, and later as a Jesuit seminarian, Wills reveals the importance of Catholicism in his own life. He discusses G.K. Chesterton, a personal hero whose writings brought him comfort after he left the seminary. He goes on to challenge, in clear and forceful terms, the claim that criticism or reform of the papacy is an assault on the faith itself. For Wills, a Catholic can be both loyal and critical, a loving child who stays with his father even if the parent makes mistakes. Why I Am a Catholic also goes beyond his personal experiences to present a sweeping narrative covering two thousand years of Catholicism, revealing that the papacy, far from being an unchanging institution, has been transformed dramatically over the millennia&mdash;and can be reimagined in the future. At a time when the Church faces various crises and struggles, Garry Wills offers an important look at both its past and its future, in a book that is &ldquo;one part autobiography, three parts history, and one part confession of faith&rdquo; (Booklist). &ldquo;It is a great satisfaction to have the Church&rsquo;s history analyzed by a mind so critical but still so in love.&rdquo; &mdash;The New Yorker</div>

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Why I Am a Catholic

<div>New York Times Bestseller: A &ldquo;remarkable and evenhanded study of Ronald Reagan&rdquo; from the Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg (The New York Times). Updated with a new preface by the author, this captivating biography of America&rsquo;s fortieth president recounts Ronald Reagan&rsquo;s life&mdash;from his poverty-stricken Illinois childhood to his acting career to his California governorship to his role as commander in chief&mdash;and examines the powerful myths surrounding him, many of which he created himself. Praised by some for his sunny optimism and old-fashioned rugged individualism, derided by others for being a politician out of touch with reality, Reagan was both a popular and polarizing figure in the 1980s United States, and continues to fascinate us as a symbol. In Reagan&rsquo;s America, Garry Wills reveals the realities behind Reagan&rsquo;s own descriptions of his idyllic boyhood, as well as the story behind his leadership of the Screen Actors Guild, the role religion played in his thinking, and the facts of his military service. With a wide-ranging and balanced assessment of both the personal and political life of this outsize American icon, the author of such acclaimed works as What Jesus Meant and The Kennedy Imprisonment &ldquo;elegantly dissects the first U.S. President to come out of Hollywood&rsquo;s dream factory [in] a fascinating biography whose impact is enhanced by techniques of psychological profile and social history&rdquo; (Los Angeles Times). </div>

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Reagan's America

<div>With a new preface: A &ldquo;stunning&rdquo; analysis of the troubled Republican president by the Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg (The New York Times Book Review). In this acclaimed biography that earned him a spot on Nixon&rsquo;s infamous &ldquo;enemies list,&rdquo; Garry Wills takes a thoughtful, in-depth, and often &ldquo;very amusing&rdquo; look at the thirty-seventh US president, and draws some surprising conclusions about a man whose name has become synonymous with scandal and the abuse of power (Kirkus Reviews). Arguing that Nixon was a reflection of the country that elected him, Wills examines not only the psychology of the man himself and his relationships with others&mdash;from his wife, Pat, to his vice-president, Spiro Agnew&mdash;but also the state of the nation at the time, mired in the Vietnam War and experiencing a cultural rift that pitted the young against the old. Putting his findings into moral, economic, intellectual, and political contexts, he ultimately &ldquo;paints a broad and provocative landscape of the nation&rsquo;s&mdash;and Nixon&rsquo;s&mdash;travails&rdquo; (The New York Times). Simultaneously compassionate and critical, and raising interesting perspectives on the shifting definitions of terms like &ldquo;conservative&rdquo; and &ldquo;liberal&rdquo; over recent decades, Nixon Agonistes is a brilliant and indispensable book from one of America&rsquo;s most acclaimed historians. </div>

Nixon Agonistes

<div>With a new preface: An &ldquo;irreverent [and] entertaining&rdquo; portrait of JFK, the Camelot mystique, and the politics of charisma (The Christian Science Monitor). Described by the New York Times as &ldquo;a sort of intellectual outlaw,&rdquo; Garry Wills takes on the romantic myths surrounding the Kennedy clan in this thought-provoking examination of electoral politics and the power of image in America. Wills argues that the much-admired dynasty, beginning with patriarch Joe Kennedy, created a corrupt climate where appearances were more important than reality, truth was discarded when it wasn&rsquo;t convenient, and an assortment of devoted loyalists sacrificed integrity for the sake of reflected glory. Touching upon topics ranging from the manipulation of the PT-109 story in the media to the authorship of Profiles in Courage to the handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis to persistent rumors of extramarital affairs, Wills offers a persuasive look not only at President John F. Kennedy and his brothers Robert and Edward, but also at the bubble that existed around them and lured in some of the best and brightest of the era. From the Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg and Why I Am a Catholic, The Kennedy Imprisonment is &ldquo;a brilliant and troubling study of the Kennedy era in American politics&rdquo; (The Philadelphia Inquirer). </div>

The Kennedy Imprisonment

<div>The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg brings his eloquence, wit, and on-target perceptions of American life and politics to this fascinating, well-drawn protrait of a twentieth-century hero. In this work of great originality&#151;the biography of an idea&#151;Garry Wills shows how John Wayne came to embody Amercian values and influenced our cultoure to a degree unmatched by any other public figure of his time. In Wills's hands, Waynes story is tranformed into a compelling narrative about the intersection of popular entertainment and political realities in mid-twentieth-century America.</div>

Garry Wills
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Books By Garry Wills (6 Books)

Henry Adams and the Making of America

Why I Am a Catholic

Reagan's America

Nixon Agonistes

The Kennedy Imprisonment

John Wayne's America

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© 2024 OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Garry WillsFollow this author

Books By Garry Wills (6 Books)

Henry Adams and the Making of America

Why I Am a Catholic

Reagan's America

Nixon Agonistes

The Kennedy Imprisonment

John Wayne's America

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© 2024 OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Garry Wills
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