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Garry Wills
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Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State Kindle Edition

by Garry Wills (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 56 ratings
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From Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills, a groundbreaking examination of how the atomic bomb profoundly altered the nature of American democracy and has left us in a state of war alert ever since.

Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What the Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017.

In Bomb Power, Garry Wills reveals how the atomic bomb transformed our nation down to its deepest constitutional roots-by dramatically increasing the power of the modern presidency and redefining the government as a national security state-in ways still felt today. A masterful reckoning from one of America's preeminent historians, Bomb Power draws a direct line from the Manhattan Project to the usurpations of George W. Bush.

The invention of the atomic bomb was a triumph of official secrecy and military discipline-the project was covertly funded at the behest of the president and, despite its massive scale, never discovered by Congress or the press. This concealment was perhaps to be expected in wartime, but Wills persuasively argues that the Manhattan Project then became a model for the covert operations and overt authority that have defined American government in the nuclear era. The wartime emergency put in place during World War II extended into the Cold War and finally the war on terror, leaving us in a state of continuous war alert for sixty-eight years and counting.

The bomb forever changed the institution of the presidency since only the president controls "the button" and, by extension, the fate of the world. Wills underscores how radical a break this was from the division of powers established by our founding fathers and how it in turn has enfeebled Congress and the courts. The bomb also placed new emphasis on the president's military role, creating a cult around the commander in chief. The tendency of modern presidents to flaunt military airs, Wills points out, is entirely a postbomb phenomenon. Finally, the Manhattan Project inspired the vast secretive apparatus of the national security state, including intelligence agencies such as the CIA and NSA, which remain largely unaccountable to Congress and the American people.

Wills recounts how, following World War II, presidential power increased decade by decade until reaching its stunning apogee with the Bush administration. Both provocative and illuminating, Bomb Power casts the history of the postwar period in a new light and sounds an alarm about the continued threat to our Constitution.
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  1. Print length
    291 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Penguin Books
  5. Publication date
    January 25, 2011
  6. Reading age
    18 years and up
  7. File size
    1066 KB
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The demands of nuclear weapons policy have poisoned the American polity, according to this unfocused jeremiad. Historian Wills (Lincoln at Gettysburg) argues that the project of deploying and defending against nuclear weapons transformed America into a national security state mired in permanent semi-emergency, with swollen military forces, unaccountable spy agencies, a Byzantine apparatus of state secrecy, and an empire of overseas bases. Worse, he writes, the aura of bomb power that presidents gleaned from their prerogative to initiate nuclear holocaust made the presidency into an American monarch[y] that sneers at constitutional restraints. Wills's is a provocative and at times insightful analysis of how presidential status and mystique hypertrophied alongside the military-industrial complex. Unfortunately, it's a rickety framework for his scattershot account of foreign and security policy in the nuclear age, which meanders from the Manhattan Project to George Bush's war on terror to gay marriage. It's often hard to see the connections he insinuates between nuclear obsessions and misdeeds like the 1954 CIA-organized coup in Guatemala. Wills's conception of bomb power is a weak explanatory principle for this sketchy take on post-war American history. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Despite his provocative subject matter, Wills refuses to side with either party and condemns Republicans and Democrats alike. The critics responded likewise by evaluating Bomb Power on its approach and arguments, making historical rather than political assessments. Some saw Wills's alarming account of the unprecedented growth of the executive branch's power as rational and persuasive; others were not so easily convinced. The Los Angeles Times, for example, considered Wills's "permanent constitutional crisis" a direct result of the conflict between the Founding Fathers' lofty ideals and the demands of a hostile modern world. Although most recognized Wills's left-leaning tendencies, only the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette accused Wills of bias. These differences aside, Bomb Power is a meticulously researched, readable, and well-timed treatise on the state of the U.S. government.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00475AXCO
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books (January 25, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 25, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1066 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 291 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 56 ratings

About the author

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Garry Wills

Garry Wills

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Garry Wills is one of the most respected writers on religion today. He is the author of Saint Augustine's Childhood, Saint Augustine's Memory, and Saint Augustine's Sin, the first three volumes in this series, as well as the Penguin Lives biography Saint Augustine. His other books include “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power, Why I Am a Catholic, Papal Sin, and Lincoln at Gettysburg, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
56 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Glenn Bassett
5.0 out of 5 stars A book that everyone should read.
Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2010
Verified Purchase
This is a very important book, one that should have been written many years ago. But it's not one to be read by anyone with suicidal tendencies, unless in the presence of someone with a good restraining hand.

That the development of the atomic bomb did far more damage to us than it did to Japan is a fact that few people have noticed. In Japan it killed a relative few people, who would, for the most part, be dead by now, in any case. But, either because of the hubris the bomb allowed us (power corrupts, etc. etc.), because of the genuine necessity for the USA to take over management of the world to protect others from the bomb, or some plausibility in between we have been almost perpetually at war since 1945 - have, in fact converted ourselves into a war country. President Eisenhower, early on, saw it coming and warned us; we ignored him at our peril. And this book shows us the consequences of our inaction.

The supposed requirement for speed has given all subsequent presidents after Truman the excuse to usurp the Constitution, ignore Congress, and declare their wars themselves....or, beginning with Korea, just to refrain from declaring them altogether and go on with the wars. Sometimes, early on, as with Korea, they called it something else, like a "police action." But by Vietnam they'd learned that no one would try to stop them. So the word "war" returned to match the deed. And foreign political assassinations and declarations that governments must be changed because we were displeased with those countries' citizens' choices barely caused little blips on our radar screens.

The atomic bomb-generated fear has been the catalyst for an unbelievable number of overlapping secret organizations for gathering "intelligence" and those organizations' constantly morphing missions from their original stated purposes toward more and more intrusion on the privacy of Americans. Remember when the CIA was just for foreign intelligence gathering? Remember when the electromic spying by the NSA was restricted to foreign targets? And what do those dozens of other spy agencies do? The result has been that any concept of privacy and anonymity are now but dim, distant memories.

What this book does not do is give us any idea how - or whether -we can ever hope to return to the America that was the hope for and the beacon to the world.
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Neal Q. Herrick
5.0 out of 5 stars A chilling book that should inspire action
Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2010
Verified Purchase
Historian Gary Wills has written a chilling account of the atomic bomb as the force that enabled our present "National Security State." Threats to our national security have often resulted in the cancellation of domestic liberties and the mere existence of "the bomb" has become a permanent threat. Wills tells the fascinating story of the cancellation of domestic liberties during the Manhattan Project. Then he tell the terrifying stories of the evolution of the National Security State and the related concentration of powers (legal and illegal)in the presidency - which now initiates and conducts wars, usurps other congressional and judicial powers and oppresses its own people. Will's proposes no solutions to fundamental threat to our freedom posed by the National Security State. He remarks that "turning it around" will be a "hard, perhaps impossible, task."

"Bomb Power" is, and should be, widely read. Wills is a "Patrick Henry" or "Tom Paine" of a much needed 2nd (peaceful) American revolution. He does a masterful job of frightening the reader and, perhaps, moving him or her to action.. My own belief is that our National Security State can be "turned around." But our federal government cannot do the job. It has a vested interest in the status quo. We, the people, on the other hand, have a vested interest in preserving what is left of our freedom. We also have a means of amending the Constitution - something the framers withheld from the federal government. Interested readers can consult my historical analysis, After Patrick Henry: a 2nd American Revolution, Black Rose Books, 2009, for ways and means of bringing about genuine governmental reform by initiating a people's amendment to the Constitution.
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Canus Major
5.0 out of 5 stars Astounded
Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2012
Verified Purchase
Yet ANOTHER tour de force by Garry Wills. Ever wondered how so much power ever became concentrated in the Executive branch? Well, you see, we had to build this bomb and keep it secret at the same time. The apparatus of secrecy, thus born and nourished, became a Frankenstein that has managed American government ever since. You will lose your constitutional virginity ... if it is still intact.
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Guy McArthur
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read
Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2011
Verified Purchase
Gary Wills traces 60 years in which the executive branch has gained political power over the legislative and judicial branches in both democratic and republican administrations. Even if you know this history well, you will probably still learn something from this book. From FDR to Obama, the unconstitutional power grab is clearly and concisely documented.
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