Verdi's Shakespeare: Men of the Theater

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.

-The New York Times

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.

"Riveting . . . a double-barreled salvo that hits two bull's-eyes." —The New York Times Book Review

This dazzling study of the three operas that Giuseppe Verdi adapted from Shakespeare's plays takes readers on a wonderfully engaging journey through opera, music, literature, history, and the nature of genius. Verdi's Shakespeare explores the writing and staging of Macbetto (Macbeth), Otello (Othello), and Falstaff, operas by Verdi, an Italian composer who could not read a word of English but who adored Shakespeare. Delving into the fast-paced worlds of these men and the hands-on life of the stage that at once challenged them and gave flight to their brilliance, Wills, in his inimitable way, illuminates the birth of artistic creation.

Introduction

PART ONE: PRE-ENLIGHTENMENT RELIGION

I. Puritans

1. Mary Dyer Must Die

2. The Puritan Psyche

3. The Puritan Conscience

4. The Puritan Intellect

II. Preludes to Enlightenment

5. Precursors: Samuel Sewall, Roger Williams

6. Spurt to Enlightenment: The Great Awakening

PART TWO: ENLIGHTENED RELIGION

III. Unitarians

7. Against the Awakening

8. Quakers

9. Deists

IV. Disestablishment

10. Beyond Tolerance

11. Jefferson's Statute

12. Madison's Remonstrance

13. First Amendment

15. Madisonian Separation

PART THREE: THE ROMANTIC ERA

V. Transcendentalism

15. Schism in New England

16. Emersonians

VI. Religion of the Heart

17. The Second Great Awakening

18. Schisms over Slavery

19. God of Battles

20. Religion in the Gilded Age

PART FOUR: CULTURE WARS

VII. Doomsday or Progress?

21. Second-Coming Theology

22. Second-Coming Politics

23. The Social Gospel

VIII. Reversals

24. Evangelicals Riding High

25. Evangelicals Brought Low

26. Religion in a Radical Time

IX. Euphoria

27. The Great Religious Truce

28. The Rights Revolution

29. Evangelicals Counterattack

X. The Karl Rove Era

30. Faith-Based Government

31. Ecunemical Karl

32. Life After Rove

Epilogue: Separation Not Suppression

Acknowledgments

Notes

Appendix I: Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

Appendix II: Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments

Index