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Featured Author: Garry Wills
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Featured Author: Garry Wills
With News and Reviews From the Archives of The New York Times
In This FeatureReviews of Garry Wills’s Earlier Books Articles by Garry Wills Related Links
Pauline Maier Reviews ‘A Necessary Evil’ (July 25, 1999) First Chapter: ‘A Necessary Evil’
Joe Schuyler/
Lipper/VikingGarry Wills
‘Chesterton: Man and Mask‘
(1961)
“In this short and frequently brilliant book, Garry Wills undertakes to restore our interest in Chesterton, not as a histrionic character in a gallery of Edwardian anecdotes, but as an essentially serious
writer . . .”‘The Second Civil War‘
(1968)
“[He] has the reporter’s eye, the writer’s ear and the artist’s spirit to put down his findings in a marvelously effective form. . . . Mr. Wills’s greatest achievement is that he had
learned a great deal about the ghetto and those who live in it.”‘Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man‘
(1970)
“. . . [an] astonishing book . . . Mr. Wills achieves the not inconsiderable feat of making Richard Nixon a sympathetic — even tragic — figure, while at the same time being appalled by him. But superb
as it is, his ‘psycho- biography’ of Mr. Nixon is merely prelude to a provocative essay on political theory.”‘Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy and Radical Religion‘
(1972)
“Though here and there a little wild and wrong-headed, ‘Bare Ruined Choirs’ is one of the most interesting books of the year, a brand new stick-waving Old Testament prophet’s careful analysis
of the crisis of the Roman Catholic Church.”‘At Button’s‘
(1979)
“[Wills] turns his hand to thriller fiction . . . an unconventional thriller, and while it has its constructional flaws, it is sharp and stimulating.”‘Confessions of a Conservative‘
(1979)
“. . . usually interesting and often brilliant when Mr. Wills is describing how things work as opposed to how they are commonly thought to work.”‘Explaining America: The Federalist‘
(1981)
“Mr. Wills works over his evidence with a mighty free hand and an imaginative mind. . . . Mr. Wills’s ‘Federalist’ is the quaint and rather charming . . . self-portrait of a long-lost generation
that created a new nation out of bad science and empty dreams.”‘The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power‘
(1982)
“The book contains few, if any, facts that have not already been published elsewhere. Mr. Wills, however, has managed to squeeze from the familiar a number of original and disquieting implications.”‘Lead Time: A Journalist’s Education‘
(1983)
“. . . reminders of the weaknesses and strengths of the presumptuously labeled new journalism at its higher level.”‘Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home‘
(1987)
“For efforts to find Mr. Reagan’s ‘place in history,’ this book will be indispensable. It will, however, be a task of baffling complexity.”‘Under God: Religion and American Politics‘
(1990)
“It is somewhat eccentric but undeniably worth reading. . . . Mr. Wills seems to have no idea of how to shape a book. . . . his book’s shapelessness, and its many sins of omission, are seriously damaging
to its cause.”‘Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America‘
(1992)
“. . . a brilliant book demonstrating that Lincoln’s words still have power. . . . Mr. Wills may overreach with certain of his assertions.”‘Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”‘
(1994)
“[Mr. Wills suggests] the play may have had greater appeal for its original audiences than is readily apparent today, and his book attempts to reclaim the lost historical dimension. . . . But some of the
links that Mr. Wills seeks to establish seem to me to strain the evidence.”‘Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders‘
(1994)
“Mr. Wills has taken a hackneyed and overly generic subject . . . and given it a highly perfunctory treatment. . . . feels less like a real book than a treatment for an inspirational television series aimed
at high school students.”‘John Wayne’s America: The Politics of Celebrity‘
(1997)
“Mr. Wills sets himself a perverse, paradoxical task: to rescue Wayne from both his idolaters and his detractors . . . The book’s crowded agenda, with its generous dose of debunking and deconstruction,
yields fascinating insights and revelations but also irritating and tedious passages as well.”‘Saint Augustine‘
(1999)
“This brilliant biography . . . presents with brio the life of a person who still stirs us . . . Wills’s agile mind matches the agility of St. Augustine. He presents his subject with candor and with
empathy.”
First Chapter: ‘Saint Augustine’ Four More Years? Learning to Live With Nixon
(November 5, 1972)
In an analysis after the election, Wills writes that those that fear Nixon would be “unleashed” in a second term mistakenly think that the “real” Nixon is “an ogre barely
restrained, or closet egghead.”Our Best Political Novel
(June 6, 1976)
In an appreciation of Mark Twain, Wills writes that “No matter what new craziness pops up in America, I find it described beforehand by him.”It’s His Party
(August 11, 1996)
Reporting from the Republican National Convention for The New York Times Magazine, Wills sees the legacy of Ronald Reagan everywhere.The Clinton Principle
(January 19, 1997)
In this article for The New York Times Magazine, Wills attempts to answer the question “Does Clinton really believe in anything?”There’s Nothing Conservative About the Classics’ Revival
(February 16, 1997)
“[For] guardians of an older tradition,” writes Wills in this article for The New York Times Magazine, “making the classics ‘relevant’ destroys their whole purpose, which
is to resist the winds of change and offer a timeless ideal all later ages can aspire toward.”A Review of Monica Crowley’s ‘Nixon in Winter’
(June 14, 1998)
“Why would Nixon, in 1989, make a senior at Colgate (as Crowley was) the object of his confidences, and then find in her his closest intellectual companion for the rest of his life? . . . Crowley
bears accurate if unwitting testimony.”A Review of George
Stephanopoulos’ ‘All Too Human’
(April 4, 1999)
“. . . tiresomely moralizing . . . For all his rather histrionic questioning of his own personal motives, Stephanopoulos never investigates his own political judgment, which was often poor . . .”
Garry Wills Takes on Sex and the Single Saint
(May 15, 1999)
In an interview, Wills says he wrote “St. Augustine,” to try to revise the popular view of the saint as a sex-obsessed, introspective sinner.Previous Author Features From The New York Times on the Web
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