Books by Garry Wills
“It’s a wonderful book that concentrates all of the author’s formidable erudition on a single short speech. The Gettysburg Address is only 272 words. It probably took him three minutes to say. Wills makes the moment crackle with electricity. He explains how Lincoln wrote the address, on the way to Gettysburg. He deconstructs speech itself and contextualizes it. All of American history was pivoting, in these three minutes from a states-based way of thinking about our society to a nation-based way of thinking. In this speech, Lincoln re-dedicated the United States to citizenship for all of its people.” Read more...
The best books on Abraham Lincoln
Ted Widmer, Historian
Confessions of a Conservative
by Garry Wills
This book was published in 1979. It’s a very small, slender book and I recommend it to people all the time because it’s so easy to read. It’s broken into two parts. The first is a series of very winning profiles of Buckley, of Kendall, and of Frank Meyer - another intellectual ideologue on the right. Then, in the second half of the book, he makes a series of arguments about conservatism. He makes a defence of government, and of politicians. He explains, for instance, that politicians are, by nature, supposed to be compromisers. He also explains how regulatory agencies, which are routinely mocked by the right, actually create the confidence that most of us have in the markets.
“Wills was the writer who made me want to write about politics. It’s so creative and imaginative, just in the prose, that it has the power of the novel. At the same time, Wills asks these enormous questions. He’s really looking at the market, and our idea of liberty, and what it really means. It’s interesting because Wills wrote this book in a period of transition, he was moving from the right to the left. Wills was the most prized protégé of Bill Buckley and James Burnham. They thought he was the next genius, that he would lead conservatism into the promised land. In fact he had never been comfortable with some of the ideology. “ Read more...
The best books on Conservatism and Culture
Sam Tanenhaus, Journalist
Interviews where books by Garry Wills were recommended
The best books on Conservatism and Culture, recommended by Sam Tanenhaus
Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review from 2004 to 2013, explains how the American right reinvented itself as a cultural counter-revolution and selects five books as backgrounders to conservatism.
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1
Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington
by Ted Widmer -
2
Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words
by Douglas L Wilson -
3
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America
by Garry Wills -
4
Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory
by Harold Holzer -
5
They Knew Lincoln
by John E Washington
The best books on Abraham Lincoln, recommended by Ted Widmer
The best books on Abraham Lincoln, recommended by Ted Widmer
He came from humble beginnings and never went to high school. Going into the presidency, he had limited political experience and lacked business, legislative and military achievements. The one thing he did not lack was a moral compass, says historian and author Ted Widmer. He picks the best books on the ups and downs and Shakespearean-style plot twists that were the life of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States.
