Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2010
208 pages
Genre: Essays
Publication Information
Bookish and retiring, Garry Wills has been an outsider in the academy, in journalism, even in his church. Yet these qualities have, paradoxically, prompted people to share intimate insights with him - perhaps because he is not a rival, a competitor, or a threat. Sometimes this made him the prey of con men like conspiratorialist Mark Lane or civil rights leader James Bevel. At other times it led to close friendship with such people as William F. Buckley, Jr., or singer Beverly Sills. The result is the most personal book Wills has ever written.
With his dazzling style and journalist's eye for detail, Wills brings history to life, whether it's the civil rights movement; the protests against the Vietnam War; the presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton; or the set of Oliver Stone's Nixon. Illuminating and provocative, Outside Looking In is a compelling chronicle of an original thinker at work in remarkable times.
"This is an episodic but completely captivating collection by the prolific journalist, historian, political columnist, and practicing Catholic." - Publishers Weekly
"Ultimately, it is Wills himself who shines brightest from these pages—owlish, ethical, skeptical of power, deep of faith and achingly honest." - Kirkus
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Garry Wills was born in 1934 in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from
Campion High School in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin in 1951 and received his PhD
in classics from Yale in 1961. In 1995, he received a L.H.D. from Bates College.
He received an honorary doctorate from the College of the Holy Cross.
A historian and author of more than 20 books including What Jesus Meant,
he is also a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.
In 1993, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Lincoln at Gettysburg: The
Words That Remade America, which describes the background and effect of
Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. In 1998, he won the
National Medal for the Humanities. He has also won the National Book Critics
Circle Award.
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