Audiobooks by Garry Wills

Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man

In this acclaimed biography that earned him a spot on Nixon's infamous 'enemies list,' Garry Wills takes a thoughtful, in-depth, and often 'very amusing' 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-from his wife, Pat, to his vice-president, Spiro Agnew-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 'paints a broad and provocative landscape of the nation's-and Nixon's-travails' (The New York Times). Simultaneously compassionate and critical, and raising interesting perspectives on the shifting definitions of terms like 'conservative' and 'liberal' over recent decades, Nixon Agonistes is a brilliant and indispensable book from one of America's most acclaimed historians.

Garry Wills (Author), Adam Barr (Narrator)

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Inventing America

From acclaimed historian Garry Wills, author of Lincoln at Gettysburg, a celebrated re-appraisal of the meaning and the source of inspiration of The Declaration of Independence, based on a reading of Jefferson's original draft document. Inventing America upended decades of thinking about The Declaration of Independence when it was first published in 1978 and remains one of the most influential and important works of scholarship about this founding document. Wills challenged the idea that Jefferson took all his ideas from John Locke. Instead, by focussing on Jefferson's original drafts, he showed Jefferson's debt to Scottish Enlightenment philosophers such as Lord Kames and Francis Hutcheson, and even the metaphysics of Aristotle. Wills's close reading of the previously overlooked drafts of the Declaration have altered and deepened the meaning and consequences of the single most important document that contintues to define America.

Garry Wills (Author), Tom Weitzel (Narrator)

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What the Qur'an Meant: And Why It Matters

America's leading religious scholar and public intellectual introduces lay readers to the Qur'an with a measured, powerful reading of the ancient text Garry Wills has spent a lifetime thinking and writing about Christianity. In What the Qur'an Meant, Wills invites readers to join him as he embarks on a timely and necessary reconsideration of the Qur'an, leading us through perplexing passages with insight and erudition. What does the Qur'an actually say about veiling women? Does it justify religious war? There was a time when ordinary Americans did not have to know much about Islam. That is no longer the case. We blundered into the longest war in our history without knowing basic facts about the Islamic civilization with which we were dealing. We are constantly fed false information about Islam-claims that it is essentially a religion of violence, that its sacred book is a handbook for terrorists. There is no way to assess these claims unless we have at least some knowledge of the Qur'an. In this book Wills, as a non-Muslim with an open mind, reads the Qur'an with sympathy but with rigor, trying to discover why other non-Muslims-such as Pope Francis-find it an inspiring book, worthy to guide people down through the centuries. There are many traditions that add to and distort and blunt the actual words of the text. What Wills does resembles the work of art restorers who clean away accumulated layers of dust to find the original meaning. He compares the Qur'an with other sacred books, the Old Testament and the New Testament, to show many parallels between them. There are also parallel difficulties of interpretation, which call for patient exploration-and which offer some thrills of discovery. What the Qur'an Meant is the opening of a conversation on one of the world's most practiced religions.

Garry Wills (Author), Robertson Dean (Narrator)

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The Future of the Catholic Church with Pope Francis

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 to make it perdure. In this brilliant and incisive study, he gives seven examples of deep and serious changes that have taken place within the last century. None of them was effected by the pope all by himself. As Wills contends, it is only by examining the history of the church that we can understand the challenges facing both it and Francis, and as history shows, any changes that meet those challenges will have impact only if the church, the people of God, support them. In reading the church’s history, Wills considers the lessons Pope Francis seems to have learned. The challenge that Francis offers the church is its ability to undertake new spiritual adventures, making it a poor church for the poor, after the example of Jesus. “Beautifully conceived and wrought essays that systematically address the wrongheadedness of the Catholic Church over centuries—and the space therein for Francis’ long-needed reforms…A welcome, thoughtful menu for the new pope on how to proceed with reform.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Garry Wills (Author), Michael Kramer (Narrator)

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Why Priests?: A Failed Tradition

In his most provocative book yet, Pulitzer Prize--winner Garry Wills asks the radical question: Why do we need priests? Bestselling author of Papal Sin and Why I Am a Catholic, Garry Wills spent five years as a young man at a Jesuit seminary and nearly became a priest himself. But after a lifetime of study and reflection, he now poses some challenging questions: Why do we need priests at all? Why did the priesthood arise in a religion that began without it and opposed it? Would Christianity be stronger without the priesthood, as it was at its outset? Meticulously researched, persuasively argued, and certain to spark debate, Why Priests? asserts that the anonymous Letter to Hebrews, a late addition to the New Testament canon, helped inject the priesthood into a Christianity where it did not exist, along with such concomitants as belief in an apostolic succession, the real presence in the Eucharist, the sacrificial interpretation of the Mass, and the ransom theory of redemption. But Wills does not expect the priesthood to fade entirely away. He just reminds us that Christianity did without it in the time of Peter and Paul with notable success. Wills concludes with a powerful statement of his own beliefs in a book that will appeal to believers and nonbelievers alike and stand for years to come as a towering achievement.

Garry Wills (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)

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Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Observer

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.

Garry Wills (Author), Garry Wills (Narrator)

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Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State

Garry Wills (Author), Stephen Hoye (Narrator)

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What the Gospels Meant

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 ) 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. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Garry Wills (Author), Garry Wills (Narrator)

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Head and Heart: American Christianities

A landmark examination of Christianity's place in American life across the broad sweep of this country's history, from the Puritans to the presidential administration of George W. Bush. The struggle within American Christianity, Garry Wills argues, now and throughout our country's history, is between the head and the heart: between reason and emotion, Enlightenment and Evangelism. Why has this been so? How has the tension between the two poles played out, and with what consequences, over the past 400 years? How "Christian" is America, after all? Wills brings a lifetime's worth of thought about these questions to bear on a magnificent historical reckoning that offers much needed perspective on some of the most contentious issues of our time. A religious revolution occurred in America in the eighteenth century, one that saw the emergence of an Enlightenment religious culture whose hallmarks were tolerance for other faiths and a belief that religion was a matter best divorced from political institutions—the proverbial "separation of church and state." Wills shows us just how incredibly radical a departure this separation was: there was simply no precedent for it. To put this leap in perspective, Wills provides a grounding in the pre-Enlightenment religion that preceded it, beginning with the early Puritans. He then provides a thrillingly clear unpacking of the steps, particularly Madison's and Jefferson's, by which church-state separation was enshrined in the Constitution, and reveals the great irony of the efforts of today's Religious Right to blur the lines between the two. In fact, it is precisely that separation that has allowed religion in America to flourish since the disestablishment of religion created a free market, as it were, and competition for souls led to the profusion of denominations across the length and breadth of the land. As Wills examines the key movements and personalities that have transformed America's religious landscape, we see again and again the same pattern emerge: a cooling of popular religious fervor followed by a grassroots explosion in evangelical activity, generally at a time of great social transformation and anxiety. But such forces inevitably go too far, provoking a backlash as is happening right now with the forces of creationism and the anti-abortion fundamentalists. Wills closes with a penetrating dissection of the Religious Right's current machinations and the threat they pose to the enlightened religion that has proved to be such a fertile and enduring force throughout American history. But in the end, Wills's abiding message is to be vigilant against the triumph of emotions over reason but to know that the tension between the two is in fact necessary, inevitable, and unending.

Garry Wills (Author), Mel Foster (Narrator)

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What Jesus Meant

In a time of national debate about what the Bible says on social issues, a distinguished historian and writer on religion examines what Jesus actually said about how we should live our lives—and how he chose to live his own. Whose side is Jesus really on? Whose views do his teachings support? Should we aspire to be "Christlike"—meaning homeless, subversive, scandalous, in constant danger of being kidnapped or arrested, and keeping company with the less-than respectable? Garry Wills points out that Jesus' acts were meant to show that He is not just like us; that he has higher rights and powers. To read the gospels in the spirit with which they were written, it is not enough to ask what Jesus did or said—or would do. We must ask what Jesus meant by his deeds and words. This is not a scholarly book, but a devotional one, written with intelligence and humility. It is a profession of faith—reasoning faith, and reasonable; what St. Anselm called "faith out on quest to know." In questing, Wills illuminates a much more complex, compelling, and controversial figure than the one we hear so much about in sound bites today.

Garry Wills (Author), Garry Wills (Narrator)

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What Paul Meant

Throughout history, Christians have debated Paul's influence in the church. In this masterly analysis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills chronicles Paul's tremendous influence on the first explosion of Christian belief, the controversy surrounding Paul through the centuries, and the meaning of his words.

Garry Wills (Author), Garry Wills (Narrator)

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Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power

In "Negro President" the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills explores a pivotal moment in American history through the lens of Thomas Jefferson and the now largely forgotten Timothy Pickering, and "prods readers to appreciate essential aspects of our distressed but well-intentioned representative democracy" (Chicago Tribune). In 1800 Jefferson won the presidential election with Electoral College votes derived from the three-fifths representation of slaves - slaves who could not vote but were still partially counted as citizens. Moving beyond the recent revisionist debate over Jefferson's own slaves and his relationship with Sally Hemings, Wills instead probes the heart of Jefferson's presidency and political life, revealing how the might of the slave states remained a concern behind his most important policies and decisions. In an eye-opening, ingeniously argued exposE, Wills restores Timothy Pickering and the Federalists' dramatic struggle to our understanding of Jefferson, the creation of the new nation, and the evolution of our representative democracy.

Garry Wills (Author), Garry Wills (Narrator)

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