Garry Wills
| Garry Wills | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
May 22, 1934 Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
| Occupation | Author, journalist, historian |
| Education |
Xavier University (MA, 1958) Yale University (PhD, 1961) |
| Alma mater | Saint Louis University (BA, 1957) |
| Period | 1961–present |
| Subject | American politics and political history, the Roman Catholic Church |
| Notable works | Nixon Agonistes (1970), Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (1978), Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (1993) |
| Notable awards |
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1993) National Medal for the Humanities (1998) |
Garry Wills (born May 22, 1934) is an American author, journalist, and historian, specializing in American history, politics, and religion, especially the history of the Catholic Church. He won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1993.
Wills has written nearly 40 books and, since 1973, has been a frequent reviewer for the New York Review of Books. He became a faculty member of the history department at Northwestern University in 1980, where he is currently an Emeritus Professor of History.
Wills was born in Atlanta, Georgia. His father, Jack Wills, was from a Protestant background, and his mother was from an Irish Catholic family. He grew up in Michigan and Wisconsin, graduating from Campion High School, a Jesuit institution, in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin in 1951. He entered and then left the Jesuit order.
He earned a B.A. in philosophy from Saint Louis University in 1957 and an M.A. from Xavier University in 1958, both in philosophy. William F. Buckley, Jr. hired him as a drama critic for National Review magazine at the age of 23. He received a PhD in classics from Yale University in 1961, and taught history at Johns Hopkins University from 1962 to 1980.
Wills has been married to Natalie Cavallo since 1959: she was the flight attendant on his first flight on an airplane. They have three children: John, Garry, and Lydia.
A trained classicist, Wills is proficient in Greek and Latin. His home in Evanston, Illinois is "filled with books", with a converted bedroom dedicated to English literature, another containing Latin literature and books on American political thought, one hallway full of books on economics and religion, "including four shelves on St. Augustine", and another with shelves of Greek literature and philosophy.
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