Stuff
Product Details
Simon & Schuster, November 2006
Trade Paperback, 320 pages
ISBN-10: 0743299639
ISBN-13: 9780743299633
Awards and Nominations
- Pulitzer Prize
Description
The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration than in the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was asked to memorialize the gruesome battle. Instead he gave the whole nation "a new birth of freedom" in the space of a mere 272 words. His entire life and previous training and his deep political experience went into this, his revolutionary masterpiece.
By examining both the address and Lincoln in their historical moment and cultural frame, Wills breathes new life into words we thought we knew, and reveals much about a president so mythologized but often misunderstood. Wills shows how Lincoln came to change the world and to effect an intellectual revolution, how his words had to and did complete the work of the guns, and how Lincoln wove a spell that has not yet been broken.
"Garry Wills has given our nation's greatest gathering of words . . . new urgency . . . demonstrating that Lincoln's words still have power."
-- William McFeely, The New York Times
"Dazzling . . . Wills is at his best, and his best may be the best that has ever been written about the Gettysburg Address as literature. Boldly revisionist and intoxicatingly original."
-- Chicago Tribune
"Garry Wills' glowing reconstruction of Lincoln's words and the circumstances gives us a real understanding of what we rote-memorized as school children. This is what history is all about."
-- Studs Terkel
"True to its historical antecedents and politically triumphant . . . A brilliantly creative reading of a critically important, indeed, culturally transforming, political document."
-- The Philadelphia Inquirer
Knox College, April 7, 2009
...renowned Lincoln scholar with an honorary degree at its 2009 Commencement exercises on Saturday, June 6. Lincoln scholar Garry Wills will receive an honorary degree, along with noted biologist Bill Geer and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. ...
Ithaca Journal, March 7, 2009
...the reading project, designed to provide a common intellectual experience for the Cornell community. The 2008 selection was Garry Wills' 'Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America,' also a Pulitzer Prize winner. As in previous ...
Cornell University, February 22, 2009
...the reading project, designed to provide a common intellectual experience for the Cornell community. The 2008 selection was Garry Wills' 'Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America,' also a Pulitzer Prize winner. Incoming students ...
Ithaca Journal, February 21, 2009
...the reading project, designed to provide a common intellectual experience for the Cornell community. The 2008 selection was Garry Wills' 'Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America,' also a Pulitzer Prize winner. As in previous ...
Cornell University, February 20, 2009
...the reading project, designed to provide a common intellectual experience for the Cornell community. The 2008 selection was Garry Wills' 'Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America,' also a Pulitzer Prize winner. Incoming students ...
Garry Wills's Books
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John Wayne's AmericaThe Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg brings his eloquence, wit, and on-target perceptions of American life and politics to this...Read More
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Venice: Lion CityGarry Wills's Venice: Lion City is a tour de force -- a rich, colorful, and provocative history of the world's most fascinating city in the fifteenth...Read More
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A Necessary EvilIn A Necessary Evil, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills shows that distrust of government is embedded deep in the American psyche. From the...Read More
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