Garry Wills

Garry Wills is an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University. He writes engagingly on a wide range of topics from a biography of St. Augustine to a history of Renaissance Venice to topics of American history and culture. He has done studies of Catholicsim, political figures such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and cultural figures like John Wayne. His book Why I Am a Catholic is due to be published in October 2002, two years after his acclaimed Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit. One of his books, Lincoln at Gettysburg, won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In addition, he is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books . He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Other distinctions include the National Humanities Medal in honor of his lifetime achievements in the humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Award (twice), the Organization of American Historians Merle Curti Award, and the Yale Graduate School’s Wilber Cross Medal.

Citizen Believers

Justice Antonin Scalia has recently raised the distinction between authority derived from on high and authority derived from below, preferring the former, since it imposes the duty of carrying out death
penalties, over the latter, which allows one to escape that duty. Professor Wills will ask in his lecture whether this can be right.