"Persuasive...elegantly argued." The New York Times Book Review The Boston Globe Bomb Power is pungent, confident, fluid, steeped in learning." Vanity Fair Bomb Power is a well-argued denunciation of our constitutional gatekeepers that is as sad and fascinating as an account of the decline of the Roman republic. ... [Wills's] credentials as a historian are impeccable. His breadth of knowledge is awe inspiring, but he never goes over the reader's head: He is a scholar with the heart of a journalist."The Miami Herald The San Francisco Chronicle The Los Angeles Times Kirkus
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.)
pungent, confident, fluid, steeped in learning.
Wills (history, emeritus, Northwestern Univ.; Lincoln at Gettysburg) expands upon an idea he raised ten years ago in A Necessary Evil, that the atomic bomb utterly changed the nature of our government. The "monopoly on use of nuclear weaponry" first given to President Truman in 1945 has since contributed to the growth of presidential power, enveloping too many acts in an extraconstitutional secrecy grown steadily more routine. Wills starts with the story of the bomb's development at Los Alamos and other sites and goes on to outline how, as the Cold War took shape between 1945 and 1952, a national security state was constructed out of components such as the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. The consequences and further causes of official "permanent war in peace" are examined here in episodes of entwined presidential secrecy and power ranging from the Korean War to the War on Terror. In an afterword already published in the New York Review of Books, Wills expresses doubts that the presidency of Barack Obama will be much different than those of his postwar predecessors. VERDICT The original premise is often lost here, but any tract from Wills will delight his readership. This book is among his most timely, if not among his best. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/09.]—Bob Nardini, Nashville
Pulitzer Prize winner Wills (What the Gospels Meant, 2008, etc.) traces a vast distortion of the Constitution and the origins of the national-security state to the product and process of the Manhattan Project. In 1942, Gen. Leslie Groves headed the atomic-bomb program, a mission so clandestine even Vice President Truman didn't know it existed. The atomic bomb was something altogether new. In the mix of unconstrained authority, hidden money and absolute secrecy that attended its creation, the author detects the blueprint for a redefined, outsized presidency and the institutions and policies of the national-security state. With the bomb central to the country's military policy, Wills argues, Americans have grown dangerously accustomed to lodging "the fate of the world" in one man's hands. This cedes to the president war-making power that properly belongs to Congress, foreclosing any debate over White House decision-making as enfeebling the president, "too dangerous" in a nuclear world. Accordingly, presidents from Truman to George W. Bush, without informing Congress or the American people, have used executive orders, the theory of the unitary executive and the vast national-security apparatus to concentrate their power. Relying on a series of seminal speeches, memos, articles and orders, Wills explains just how the instruments for permanent war in peace were assembled. He cites a number of national humiliations-the Bay of Pigs, the secret Cambodian bombing, the Pentagon Papers, Iran-Contra, etc.-to show that presidents, regardless of party, have been permitted too much unchecked authority, bomb power, handed them by Groves and the scientists at Los Alamos. With the cult of the Commander inChief has come the expansion of state secrets, making accountability doubly difficult. Elaborate classification and clearance systems, in place ostensibly for security reasons, have become instead a cover for government embarrassment, deception, even crime, and often cripple policy by keeping important information from knowledgeable critics. As usual with Wills, provocatively argued and elegantly written.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills examines the augmentation of U.S. presidential power, starting with the Manhattan Project, extending into the Cold War, and reaching an apex with President George W. Bush and the War on Terror. Stephen Hoye's voice has just the right emphasis and unrushed pacing as he recounts the secrecy surrounding the development of the atomic bomb, which Truman and subsequent presidents used to assert their power. Wills focuses on the use of nuclear weaponry, the cult of the commander-in-chief, and the worldwide network of military bases used to maintain nuclear supremacy. He also covers how the various intelligence agencies aided in the development of the national security state. Hoye varies his delivery and engages his listeners in these serious topics. B.C.E. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
FEBRUARY 2010 - AudioFile
