Best Selling Books by Garry Wills

Shakespeare’s plays abound with kings and leaders who crave a public stage and seize every opportunity to make their lives a performance: Antony, Cleopatra, Richard III, Othello, and many others. Such self-dramatizing characters appear in the work of other playwrights of the era as well, Marlowe’s Edward II and Tamburlaine among them. But Elizabethan playwrights were not alone in realizing that a sense of theater was essential to the exercise of power. Real rulers knew it, too, and none better than Queen Elizabeth. In this fascinating study of political stagecraft in the Elizabethan era, Garry Wills explores a period of vast cultural and political change during which the power of make-believe to make power real was not just a theory but an essential truth. Wills examines English culture as Catholic Christianity’s rituals were being overturned and a Protestant queen took the throne. New iconographies of power were necessary for the new Renaissance liturgy to displace the medieval church-state. The author illuminates the extensive imaginative constructions that went into Elizabeth’s reign and the explosion of great Tudor and Stuart drama that provided the imaginative power to support her long and successful rule.

The story of the baptism of St Augustine by Bishop Ambrose in Milan at Easter 387 - and thereby the acceptance into the Church of one of the most important figures in Christian history. Beginning with the archaeology of Ambrose''s Milan and the re-discovery of the baptistery after the Second World War, Garry Wills tells the story of the at times prickly relationship between Ambrose and Augustine and its importance for the future history of the Church. Heilluminaties the scene of the baptism itself, along with the sources of its ritual, and introduces us to the company of the relatives and friends who greeted Augustine as he emerged from the baptism pool.Appropriately, the book ends with a reflection on the later relationship between Augustine and Ambrose and the influence of the latter upon Augustine''s later thought - which has been so seminal in the development of Christian thought ever since.

Renaissance plays and poetry in England were saturated with the formal rhetorical twists that Latin education made familiar to audiences and readers. Yet a formally educated man like Ben Jonson was unable to make these ornaments come to life in his two classical Roman plays. Garry Wills, focusing his attention on Julius Caesar, here demonstrates how Shakespeare so wonderfully made these ancient devices vivid, giving his characters their own personal styles of Roman speech. Shakespeare also makes Rome present and animate by casting his troupe of experienced players to make their strengths shine through the historical facts that Plutarch supplied him with. The result is that the Rome English-speaking people carry about in their minds is the Rome that Shakespeare created for them. And that is even true, Wills affirms, for today''s classical scholars with access to the original Roman sources.--From publisher description.

The pivotal volume of the Christian philosopher''s seminal work is translated and interpreted by Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills.

Wills''s "Saint Augustine," which has had 11 printings, was a "New York Times" Notable Book. Now comes his third volume of "Saint Augustine''s Confessions."

"One of the country''s most distinguished intellectuals [and] one of its most provocative." -The New York Times Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What the Qur''an Meant, coming fall 2017. Bookish and retiring, Garry Wills has been an outsider in the academy, in journalism, even in his church. Yet these qualities have, paradoxically, prompted people to share intimate insights with him- perhaps because he is not a rival, a competitor, or a threat. Sometimes this made him the prey of con men like conspiratorialist Mark Lane or civil rights leader James Bevel. At other times it led to close friendship with such people as William F. Buckley, Jr., or singer Beverly Sills. The result is the most personal book Wills has ever written. With his dazzling style and journalist''s eye for detail, Wills brings history to life, whether it''s the civil rights movement; the protests against the Vietnam War; the presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton; or the set of Oliver Stone''s Nixon. Illuminating and provocative, Outside Looking In is a compelling chronicle of an original thinker at work in remarkable times.

In the Catholic Church, with the election of a conservative pope, Benedict XVI, it has led to a doctrinal zealotry, the alienation of large numbers of American Catholics, and an increased intrusion of the Church into politics."

New York Times–bestselling author Garry Wills provides a provocative analysis of the theological and historical basis for the priesthood In a riveting and provocative tour de force from the author of What Jesus Meant, Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills poses the challenging question: Why did the priesthood develop in a religion that began without it and, indeed, was opposed to it? Why Priests? argues brilliantly and persuasively for a radical re-envisioning of the role of the church as the Body of Christ and for a new and better understanding of the very basis of Christian belief. As Wills emphasizes, the stakes for the writer and the church are high, for without the priesthood there would be no belief in an apostolic succession, the real presence in the Eucharist, the sacrificial interpretation of the Mass, and the ransom theory of redemption. This superb study of the origins of the priesthood stands as Wills’s towering achievement and will be of interest to all inquiring minds, believers and non-believers alike.

“A remarkable achievement—a learned yet eminently readable and provocative exploration of the four small books that reveal most of what’s known about the life and death of Jesus.” (Los Angeles Times) Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What the Qur''an Meant, coming fall 2017. In his New York Times bestsellers What Jesus Meant and What Paul Meant, Garry Wills offers tour-de-force interpretations of Jesus and the Apostle Paul. Here Wills turns his remarkable gift for biblical analysis to the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Wills examines the goals, methods, and styles of the evangelists and how these shaped the gospels'' messages. Hailed as "one of the most intellectually interesting and doctrinally heterodox Christians writing today" (The New York Times Book Review), Wills guides readers through the maze of meanings within these foundational texts, revealing their essential Christian truths.

"You all know me, I''m Jack Ruby." That''s what the killer shouted when police grabbed him a split second after he had pumped a bullet into the stomach of Lee Oswald. Who was Jack Ruby? Madman? Superpatriot? Conspirator? Two top writers achieve a gripping portrait of the complex and contradictory character of Jack Ruby - a man who grew up in an immigrant home with a drunken father and an insane mother, who climbed out of the ghetto to become the owner of a popular Dallas nightclub. The authors let his friends and employees describe the Jack Ruby they knew. He was a punch-happy scrapper who fought before he thought because "I might lose my nerve." Ruby could "cuss straight on like saying his prayers" but didn''t allow dirty talk in front of his lady strippers. He could fire an employee seventeen times and pay for her kid''s operation. A bachelor, he "respected" his fiancee of twelve years too much to marry her. He sought the company of cops, newsmen, anyone he thought important. Jack Ruby had many acquaintances but his only real friends were his dogs. Living in the fringe-society of hucksters and hustlers, Jack Ruby longed to be a big man in Dallas. Until the day he died he had a childlike awe of "class," respectability, and the law. Wills and Demaris get completely inside the mind of this complex man. They recreate the day Jack Ruby woke, got an SOS call from one of his girls, shaved, dressed, said good-bye to his dogs, drove downtown, parked his car illegally, walked over to the crowd and shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald. The reader understands. He did it "for Jackie and the kids" and because he was Jack Ruby. With the same graphic immediacy the authors describe those first stunned minutes of disbelief after the murder, Ruby''s incomprehension of his position, his grotesque camaraderie with his old friends on the Dallas police force ("You all know me..."). The authors move jail to courtroom, catching the carnival atmosphere of Ruby''s trial--with brilliant portraits of defense attorney Belli and prosecutor Alexander--and finally to the hospital room where Ruby died. This book reveals Jack Ruby as no other has. It is a story of a marked life, of a man whose precarious sanity was destroyed by the events he created--who spent his last mortal strength trying to persuade the world that he did his duty as an American, a Texan, and a Jew when he killed the man who killed Kennedy.--From jacket flap

A New York Times Bestselling Author. Although the rosary - a form of prayer used for centuries - has fallen into disuse in modern times, Garry Wills sees it as a practice eminently suited to our modern world. Though some think of the rosary as a form of piety, Wills argues that it is deeply grounded in scripture and theology, a way by which Christians participate in the life of Christ''s mystical body. Here he supplies the texts with some suggested reflections, and a series of exquisite Tintoretto paintings to concentrate the mind. "Inspiring and refreshing." - Publishers Weekly

Gregory Skipwith belongs to a club of eighteenth-century scholars called At Buttons. The club and the New York Public Library where Gregory works should have protected him from violence, but it doesn''t. He finds himself confronted with murder and violence even in these dim places. When he and his strange crew of scholars try to cope with a conspiracy of conspiratorialists in New Orleans these reach their climax.

From one of America''s foremost historians, Inventing America compares Thomas Jefferson''s original draft of the Declaration of Independence with the final, accepted version, thereby challenging many long-cherished assumptions about both the man and the document. Although Jefferson has long been idealized as a champion of individual rights, Wills argues that in fact his vision was one in which interdependence, not self-interest, lay at the foundation of society. "No one has offered so drastic a revision or so close or convincing an analysis as Wills has . . . The results are little short of astonishing" (Edmund S. Morgan New York Review of Books ).

From one of America''s most distinguished historians comes this classic analysis of Richard Nixon. By considering some of the president''s opinions, Wills comes to the controversial conclusion that Nixon was actually a liberal. Both entertaining and essential, Nixon Agonistes captures a troubled leader and a struggling nation mired in a foolish Asian war, forfeiting the loyalty of its youth, puzzled by its own power, and looking to its cautious president for confidence. In the end, Nixon Agonistes reaches far beyond its assessment of the thirty-seventh president to become an incisive and provocative analysis of the American political machine. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The New York Times bestselling historian takes on a pressing question in modern religion?will Pope Francis embrace change? Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope and the first from the Americas, offers a challenge to his church. Can he bring about significant change? Should he? Garry Wills, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, argues provocatively that, in fact, the history of the church throughout is a history of change. In this brilliant and incisive study, Wills describes the deep and serious changes that have taken place in the church or are in the process of occurring. These include the change from Latin, the growth and withering of the ecclesiastical monarchy, the abandonment of biblical literalism, the assertion and nonassertion of infallibility, and the erosion of church patriarchy. In such developments we see the living church adapting itself to the new historical circumstances. As Wills contends, it is only by examining the history of the church that we can understand Pope Francis''s and the church''s challenges. From the Hardcover edition.

The words that remade America.