Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Garry Wills
    -ESSAY: The Original President: How the Supreme Court’s most recent decision on presidential immunity betrayed claims of originalism. (Garry Wills, 8/15/24, Mother Jones)     -ESSAY : Lincoln's Greatest Speech:  Frederick Douglass called it "a sacred effort," and Lincoln himself thought that his Second Inaugural, which offered a theodicy of the Civil War, was better than the Gettysburg Address (Garry Wills, September 1999, Atlantic Monthly)
    -ESSAY : How to Speak to a Nation's Suffering: The meaning of the Gettysburg address, which will be read aloud twice on Sept. 11, must be made new to give birth to further creativity. (GARRY WILLS, 8/18/02, NY Times)
    -ESSAY:  Putnam's America (Garry Wills, July 17, 2000, American Prospect)
    -ESSAY: The Double-Talk Express (Garry Wills, March 9, 2000)
    -ARCHIVES: Garry Wills Column
    -LECTURE: A Necessary Good or a Necessary Evil (Garry Wills, 11/17/00, National Heritage Lecture)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: To Keep and Bear Arms (Garry Wills, September 21, 1995, NY Review of Books)
    -GERGEN DIALOGUE: David Gergen talks with Garry Wills, author of "A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government." (Newshour Online 12/03/99)
    -ESSAY: Entangled Giant (Garry Wills, 10/08/09, NY Review of Books)
    -INTERVIEW: The American Atom: Garry Wills pins down the origins of the imperial presidency in the dark recesses of the Manhattan Project—and explains it all to Rick Perlstein (Rick Perlstein, Book Forum)

Early on in the book comes an account of what would actually happen in the case of an executive decapitation—an extraconstitutional parallel to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, which passes power from an incapacitated president to the vice president, then down through the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate, descending into the ranks of the cabinet and ending with the secretary of education. The real procedure, Wills creatively and convincingly argues, relying on the reporting of James Mann for his 2004 book on the Bush "war cabinet," Rise of the Vulcans, was established in drills "during the Reagan presidency. Former White House chiefs of staff—primarily Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney—were told to leave their homes in the middle of the night, telling no one (including their wives) where they were going. They were flown to 'undisclosed locations,' where they worked with White House national security people to set up emergency governments, working on the assumption that the president and vice president had been killed by nuclear attack. Using a cabinet member as their interim 'President,' they spent days with sophisticated communication equipment managing a response to war."

The lesson of all this power shifting in the executive branch is quite stark, in Wills's view. "If the President has the sole authority to launch nation-destroying weapons," he writes on the third page of the book, "he has license to use every other power at his disposal that might safeguard that supreme necessity. If he says he needs other and lesser powers, how can Congress or the courts discern whether he needs them when they have no supervisory role over the basis of the claim he is making?"

    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: Examining The U.S. President's Military Might (NP: All Things Considered, 1/23/10)
    -INTERVIEW: The Outrider: The prolific Garry Wills on Camille Paglia, the death of JFK Jr., Clinton's infidelities, and more (Seth Gitell, NOVEMBER 8, 1999, Boston Phoenix)
    -INTERVIEW:  Garry Wills, the author of Why I Am a Catholic, talks about faith, scandal, and the importance of constructive criticism (Atlantic Unbound | July 24, 2002)
    -INTERVIEW:  Kim Lawton's interview with Garry Wills (Religion & Ethics Weekly, PBS)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: Garry Wills on Papal Sin (Fresh Air)
    -PROFILE: That rarest of birds: Wills is a public Catholic intellectual with a sharp pen and broad appeal (James T. Fisher, 11/03/00, National Catholic Reporter)
    -ESSAY: Garry Wills' Pedophilia Problem (J.P. Zmirak, May 23, 2002, FrontPageMagazine.com)
    -ESSAY: Caveat Lector (Msgr. George G. Higgins, July 31, 2000, The Yard Stick)
    -Study Questions: Wills' Lincoln At Gettysburg
    -ESSAY: Equality as a Conservative Principle (Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont.org)
    -ESSAY: Defending the Cause of Human Freedom (Harry V. Jaffa, April 15, 1994, The Claremont Institute)
    -ESSAY: Jaffa Versus Mansfield: Does America Have A Constitutional or A "Declaration of Independence" Soul? (Thomas G. West, November 29, 2002, The Claremont Institute)
    -ESSAY : Learning From Lincoln (Herman Belz, Claremont Institute)
    -ESSAY: Did Lincoln Kill the Constitution? (Allen C. Guelzo, Family Research Council)
    -ESSAY : The Imaginary Secessionist: A Reply to Joe Sobran?s "Imaginary Abe" (Harry V. Jaffa, August 31, 2001, Claremont.org)
    -ESSAYS: Rhetoric of Freedom: Lincoln, Emerson and Douglas (September 16, 1999, Atlantic Monthly)
    -ESSAY: The Apotheosis of the Lie (Joe Sobran, SOBRAN'S, Bonus Issue 2000)
    -ESSAY :  Morality and American Society (Religion & Liberty, May and June 1992)
    -ARCHIVES: Garry Wills (NY Review of Books)
    -ARCHIVES: Garry Wills (Atlantic Monthly)
    -ARCHIVES: "garry wills" (Find Articles)
    -REVIEW: of Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills  (Todd Volker, Illinois Periodicals Online)
    -REVIEW: of Lincoln at Gettysburg (DKD, Christian Scholar's Review)
    -REVIEW: of Lincoln at Gettysburg (Jeff Wissot )
    -REVIEW : of Lincoln at Gettysburg (Paul A. Rahe, Reviews in American History)
    -REVIEW : of John Wayne's America (JONATHAN LETHEM, Salon)
    -REVIEW: of John Wayne's America (Virginia Wright Wexman, Film Quarterly)
    -REVIEW: of John Wayne's America (Stephen M. Kocis, III, From the Right)
    -REVIEW: of John Wayne's America (Keith Phipps, Onion AV Club)
    -REVIEW: of Necessary Evil (David Boaz, American Enterprise)
    -REVIEW: of Necessary Evil (Richard A. Epstein, Reason)
    -REVIEW: of A Necessary Evil  (Myles Kantor, LewRockwell.com)
    -REVIEW: of Necessary Evil (John McGreevy, Commonweal)
    -REVIEW: of A Necessary Evil (Gary Rosen, Commentary)
    -REVIEW : of A Necessary Evil (Nicholas Lemann, Washington Monthly)
    -REVIEW: of A NECESSARY EVIL by Garry Wills (David Gordon, Mises Review)
    -REVIEW : of A Necessary Evil  (Andrew Milner, City Paper)
    -REVIEW: of A Necessary Evil (Robert Westbrook, Christian Century)
    -REVIEW: of A NECESSARY EVIL by Garry Wills (David Gordon, Mises Review)
    -REVIEW: of Papal Sin (John Garvey, Commonweal)
    -REVIEW: of Papal Sin (Eamon Duffy, Commonweal)
    -REVIEW: of Papal Sin (Robert Royal, National Review)
    -REVIEW: of Papal Sin (Dan Bischoff, Tikkun)
    -REVIEW: of Papal Sin (Susan K. Wood, Christian Century)
    -REVIEW: of Saint Augustine. By Garry Wills (John Peter Kenney, First Things)
    -REVIEW: of Saint Augustine (James Patout Burns, Christian Century)
    -REVIEW: of Saint Augustine (Glenn Tinder, Commonweal)
    -REVIEW: of Chesterton by Garry Wills (Luke Timothy Johnson, Commonweal)
    -REVIEW : of  Why I Am a Catholic  By Garry Wills (Paul Wilkes, Boston Globe)
    -REVIEW: of Why I am a Catholic (Jeffrey Hart, National Review)
    -REVIEW: of Why I am a Catholic (Steve Rabey, Religion News Service)
    -REVIEW: of Why I am a Catholic (MICHAEL DRESSMAN, Houston Chronicle)
    -REVIEW: of Why I am a Catholic (Scott Appleby, America)
    -REVIEW: of Why I am a Catholic (William Droel, National Catholic Reporter)
    -REVIEW: of Garry Wills's James Madison (ROSS DAVIES, Find Law)
    -REVIEW: of CATHOLIC INTELLECTUALS AND CONSERVATIVE POLITICS IN AMERICA by Patrick Allitt (David Gordon, Mises Review)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Confessions of a Modernist (MICHAEL WARREN DAVIS, 1/03/22, Crisis)
    -REVIEW: of Confessions of a Conservative by Garry Wills (James V. Schall, Modern Age)
    -REVIEW: of Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and The National Security State By GARRY WILLS (Walter Isaacson, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Bomb Power (Glenn C. Altschuler, Boston Globe)
    -REVIEW: of Bomb Power (David Holahan, CS Monitor)
    -REVIEW: of Bomb Power (ARIEL GONZALEZ, Miami Herald)
    -REVIEW: of Bomb Power (Jack Goldsmith, New Republic)