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Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State Hardcover – January 21, 2010
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.
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Press HC, The
- Publication dateJanuary 21, 2010
- Reading age18 years and up
- Dimensions6.34 x 0.98 x 9.29 inches
- ISBN-101594202400
- ISBN-13978-1594202407
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-Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review
"A powerful-and sobering-account of the step-by-step creation of government structures, unaccountable to Congress or the people, to conduct 'permanent war in peace.'"
-The Boston Globe
"Bomb Power is pungent, confident, fluid, steeped in learning."
-Vanity Fair
"Written in Wills' characteristically accessible style, 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
"Deeply thought-provoking... A prolific author of astonishing range, Wills...offers a forceful indictment of the 43rd president, and even more of his vice president, Dick Cheney."
-The San Francisco Chronicle
"Thought-provoking...compelling."
-The Los Angeles Times
"As usual with Wills, provocatively argued and elegantly written."
-Kirkus
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Penguin Press HC, The; First Edition (January 21, 2010)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1594202400
- ISBN-13 : 978-1594202407
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Item Weight : 1.08 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.34 x 0.98 x 9.29 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #238,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Garry Wills is one of the most respected writers on religion today. He is the author of Saint Augustine's Childhood, Saint Augustine's Memory, and Saint Augustine's Sin, the first three volumes in this series, as well as the Penguin Lives biography Saint Augustine. His other books include “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power, Why I Am a Catholic, Papal Sin, and Lincoln at Gettysburg, which won the Pulitzer Prize.
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That the development of the atomic bomb did far more damage to us than it did to Japan is a fact that few people have noticed. In Japan it killed a relative few people, who would, for the most part, be dead by now, in any case. But, either because of the hubris the bomb allowed us (power corrupts, etc. etc.), because of the genuine necessity for the USA to take over management of the world to protect others from the bomb, or some plausibility in between we have been almost perpetually at war since 1945 - have, in fact converted ourselves into a war country. President Eisenhower, early on, saw it coming and warned us; we ignored him at our peril. And this book shows us the consequences of our inaction.
The supposed requirement for speed has given all subsequent presidents after Truman the excuse to usurp the Constitution, ignore Congress, and declare their wars themselves....or, beginning with Korea, just to refrain from declaring them altogether and go on with the wars. Sometimes, early on, as with Korea, they called it something else, like a "police action." But by Vietnam they'd learned that no one would try to stop them. So the word "war" returned to match the deed. And foreign political assassinations and declarations that governments must be changed because we were displeased with those countries' citizens' choices barely caused little blips on our radar screens.
The atomic bomb-generated fear has been the catalyst for an unbelievable number of overlapping secret organizations for gathering "intelligence" and those organizations' constantly morphing missions from their original stated purposes toward more and more intrusion on the privacy of Americans. Remember when the CIA was just for foreign intelligence gathering? Remember when the electromic spying by the NSA was restricted to foreign targets? And what do those dozens of other spy agencies do? The result has been that any concept of privacy and anonymity are now but dim, distant memories.
What this book does not do is give us any idea how - or whether -we can ever hope to return to the America that was the hope for and the beacon to the world.
"Bomb Power" is, and should be, widely read. Wills is a "Patrick Henry" or "Tom Paine" of a much needed 2nd (peaceful) American revolution. He does a masterful job of frightening the reader and, perhaps, moving him or her to action.. My own belief is that our National Security State can be "turned around." But our federal government cannot do the job. It has a vested interest in the status quo. We, the people, on the other hand, have a vested interest in preserving what is left of our freedom. We also have a means of amending the Constitution - something the framers withheld from the federal government. Interested readers can consult my historical analysis, After Patrick Henry: a 2nd American Revolution, Black Rose Books, 2009, for ways and means of bringing about genuine governmental reform by initiating a people's amendment to the Constitution.








