In this new view of the greatest historian of the nineteenth century, historian Wills showcases Henry 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, extensive foreign travel, political service in Lincoln's White House, and much more to invent the study of history as we know it. His chronicle established new...

In this study of the relationship between politics and popular culture, the author examines the politics that was John Wayne, American Cold War icon and the personification of America's frontier myth.

New York Times bestselling historian Garry Wills 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 argues that changes have been the evidence of life in the Catholic Church. It has often changed, sometimes with bad consequences, more often with good-good enough...

"Wills describes a papacy that seems steadfastly unwilling to face the truth about itself, its past, and its relations with others." "Wills traces the rise of the papacy's stubborn resistance to the truth, beginning with the challenges posed in the nineteenth century by science, democracy, scriptural scholarship, and rigorous history. The legacy of that resistance, despite the brief flare of John XXIII's papacy and some good initiatives in the 1960s...

In A Necessary Evil, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills shows that distrust of government is embedded deep in the American psyche. From the revolt of the colonies against king and parliament to present-day tax revolts, militia movements, and debates about term limits, Wills shows that American antigovernment sentiment is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of our history. By debunking some of our fondest myths about the Founding Fathers,...

A historical perspective on Venice during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is told through its relationship with art and its connection to religion, and details the labor, warfare, prayer, and discipline of the time.

The nucleus of the present-day Library of Congress was formed in 1815, when the nation purchased Thomas Jefferson's personal library of about six thousand volumes, which had been organized around the concepts of "Memory" (history), "Reason" (philosophy, law, and science), and "Imagination" (the arts). Today, the Library's vast holdings - nearly 110 million items in formats ranging rom manuscripts to motion pictures and sound recordings - offer an...