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Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State | 
| Author: Garry Wills
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 37767
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1St Edition
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 1594202400
Dewey Decimal Number: 355.033073
EAN: 9781594202407
ASIN: 1594202400
Publication Date: January 21, 2010
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Product Description
From Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills, a groundbreaking examination of how the atomic bomb profoundly altered the nature of American democracy and has left us in a state of war alert ever since.
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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
 "Bomb Power" Another Insightful Read from Garry Wills June 22, 2010
Mary P. Johnson (Severna Park, Maryland)
Wills first covers the history of the development of the atomic bomb during World War II where we learned methods of security employed for this elaborate project. Later Wills gives us an insider's view of how President Bush and Vice President Cheney manipulated laws to gain more power for the President's office. He also gives us historical information about past administrations from WWII on. His books always offer us profound, fresh insight based on an amazing historical knowledge and broad understanding of how the government works.
What a Real Slam Dunk Looks Like June 10, 2010
Kelly Cooper
True words. Garry Wills is probably the most under-appreciated historian working today. His previous books are intense, provocative and intellectually bulletproof; this latest one is no exception. His thesis in "Bomb Power" is that the advent of the nuclear age irrevocably changed the nature of executive power in America, tilting it towards an imperial presidency, a state of perpetual war, and a corrosive dependence on secrecy. That David Hoffman can win a Pulitzer ("The Dead Hand") while Garry Wills' exposé on nuclear politics drifts by virtually unnoticed is a testimony to the power of confirmation bias with respect to the former and to the unwelcome nature of truth with respect to the latter (or vice versa, depending on how ideologically blinkered a reader might be).
To be fair, "Bomb Power" isn't a work of investigative journalism. There are no new revelations here (at least not for those familiar with the various legacies of deceit that trail our federal government like slug slime). What Wills has done is to give a clear and unifying context within which to view old scandals and betrayals; i.e., as part of a pattern of erosion in which Congress's constitutional role is continually being subverted and diminished.
 Powerful Message, Flawed Book April 21, 2010
John Hevelin (San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am a big fan of Garry Wills and have read most of his non-religious writing. I have very much enjoyed his writings about Nixon, Reagan, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Henry Adams. I also read Head and Heart: American Christianities (2007), which I thought was extraordinary. I am very much in agreement with the central thesis of "Bomb Power" -- that the secret creation of nuclear weapons has led to a consolidation of power in presidential and military hands that threatens our Constitutional government -- which is why I found this book frustrating and disappointing.
The lack of a Bibliography makes it difficult to ascertain whether Professor Wills read either THE DECISION TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF AN AMERICAN MYTH (Gar Alperovitz, 1995) or House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power (James Carroll, 2006), two books that make a case very similar to that made by Professor Wills. Alperovitz basically makes the case that President Truman and Secretary of State Byrnes made a unilateral decision to drop atomic weapons on Japan in order to gain negotiating leverage against Stalin at the Yalta Conference, which would make it the first example of the kind of executive abuse that Professor Wills wants to warn us against. I would certainly have expected Professor Wills to have mentioned these books.
Professor Wills discusses life at Los Alamos, but seems to rely on Richard Feynman's lighthearted memoirs or Jennet Conant's deeply flawed 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos (2005). (Conant's book is mostly an apology for her father's decisions and perpetuates myths about the need to drop the atomic bombs.) I would have welcomed a mention of Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhatten Project (1997), Peter Bacon Hales's magnificant discussion of the logistics of the Manhattan Project, which is a chilling account of the secrecy that surrounded the creation of the Los Alamos, Hanford, and Oak Ridge sites.
(Professor Wills has been poorly served by his publisher. In addition to the omission of a bibliography, the decision to group notes at the end of the book makes it difficult for a reader to evaluate citations and sources. It is unfortunate that in this day and age, when computer typesetting makes footnoes an inexpensive and convenient option, that so many publishers choose instead to collect references in a section at the end of the book.)
Much of this book is very worth reading. I found the discussion of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers very enlightening, as well as Professor Wills's discussion of the Korean War. And Professor Wills's thesis about the danger to the Constitution is of great importance. But the book seems "choppy" and slapdash and less clear that much of Professor Wills's other work. I'm glad I bought it, glad I read it, but wish Professor Wills had taken a bit more time with it.
A chilling book that should inspire action April 10, 2010
Neal Q. Herrick (Boydton, VA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Historian Gary Wills has written a chilling account of the atomic bomb as the force that enabled our present "National Security State." Threats to our national security have often resulted in the cancellation of domestic liberties and the mere existence of "the bomb" has become a permanent threat. Wills tells the fascinating story of the cancellation of domestic liberties during the Manhattan Project. Then he tell the terrifying stories of the evolution of the National Security State and the related concentration of powers (legal and illegal)in the presidency - which now initiates and conducts wars, usurps other congressional and judicial powers and oppresses its own people. Will's proposes no solutions to fundamental threat to our freedom posed by the National Security State. He remarks that "turning it around" will be a "hard, perhaps impossible, task."
"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.
A book that everyone should read. March 18, 2010
Glenn Bassett (Los Angeles, USA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a very important book, one that should have been written many years ago. But it's not one to be read by anyone with suicidal tendencies, unless in the presence of someone with a good restraining hand.
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.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
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