Garry Wills, the prizewinning historian, argues that changes have been the evidence of life in the Catholic Church. It has often changed, sometimes with bad consequences, more often with good, good enough to make it endure. In this brilliant and incisive study, he gives seven examples of deep and serious changes that have taken place (or are taking place) within the last century. None of them was effected by the pope all by himself. As Wills contends,...

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and religious scholar redirects his lifelong focus on Christianity and takes open-minded look at the Qur'an, finding the original meaning of the sacred text and showing numerous parallels between it and the Old and New Testaments. --

An examination of Christianity's place in American life through history, from the Puritans to the administration of George W. Bush. The struggle within American Christianity, historian Wills argues, has been between the head and the heart: reason and emotion, Enlightenment and Evangelism. 18th century America saw a religious revolution--an Enlightenment culture emerged whose hallmarks were tolerance for other faiths and a belief that religion was...

This book explores the life and work of Henry Adams, the greatest historian of the nineteenth century. The author showcases Adams's little-known but seminal study of the early United States and elicits from it fresh insights on the paradoxes that roil America to this day. Adams drew on his own southern fixation, extensive foreign travel, political service in Lincoln's White House, and much more to invent the study of history as we know it. His chronicle...

The author recounts his own experiences as a Jesuit seminarian and a Catholic layman, traces the origins of the papacy and explains why this often fallible institution is not the same as the Church, and discusses the Apostle's Creed.

Examines the goals, methods, and styles of the evangelists and how these shaped the gospels' messages. The earliest book, Mark, emphasizes Jesus the sufferer; in Matthew, Jesus the teacher; in Luke, Jesus the reconciler; and in John, Jesus the mystic.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1993 book Lincoln at Gettysburg, Garry Wills showed how the Gettysburg Address revolutionized the conception of modern America. In Witches and Jesuits, Wills again focuses on a single document to open up a window on an entire society. He begins with a simple question: If Macbeth is such a great tragedy, why do performances of it so often fail? The stage history of Macbeth has created a legendary curse on the drama. Superstitious...

In this book, which corresponds to Book Ten of the Confessiones, Augustine pursues his meditation on the self and his intimate testimony to God by moving from his life before baptism to his entrance into a holy life and embrace of the Trinity, the celebration of which will occupy him for the remaining chapters. Augustine contemplates this transition within his own memory, for to him, the "vast treasure store of memory" is where identity is forged,...

According to Garry Wills, most readers of Augustine interpret his meditation on sin in the Confessiones as an indication of his obsession with sex. But as Wills suggests in his discussion of book two of Augustine's influential work, sexual transgression is not Augustine's main focus as he reflects on the nature of human sinfulness. Instead, Augustine seeks to understand man's power to transgress-how it is that good creatures can choose evil deeds....