Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State

Written by Garry Wills

Narrated by Stephen Hoye

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Jan 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9781400185085

Garry Wills

Garry Wills is the author of 21 books, including the bestseller Lincoln at Gettysburg (winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award), John Wayne's America, Certain Trumpets, Under God, and Necessary Evil. A frequent contributor to many national publications, including the New York Times Magazine and the New York Review of Books, he is also an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University and lives in Evanston, Illinois.

Reviews for Bomb Power

[narboink · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[dbeveridge_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating account of the rise of the imperial presidency and the security state as a function of the development of the atomic bomb. A warning to all who feel that a change in administrations means a change in the balance of power.