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
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
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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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Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
 BOMB POWER CHANGES THE BALANCE January 27, 2010
James L. Woolridge (Sunny Florida)
20 out of 23 found this review helpful
Award winning historian, author and teacher, Garry Wills talks to the readers about the influences of 'bomb power' on American politics and the separation of powers in our government. Professor Wills, in this well written book leads us from the secret Manhattan Project,developing the bomb down to current times forwarding the idea that the bomb has given the President vast power, not only to use the bomb but to do do all the covert operations needed to deal with the nuclear use and protection of the country from countries that might use nuclear threats to their advantage. This upsets our balance of powers set forth in the Constitution. Wills always writes well and this book is an example of his good works but the idea of the 'bomb power' is going to take more study. A vastly interesting theory
A book that everyone should read. March 18, 2010
Glenn Bassett (Los Angeles, USA)
6 out of 6 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.
Will Americans Pay Attention to Garry Wills? February 10, 2010
Thomas J. Farrell (Duluth, MN USA)
18 out of 23 found this review helpful
With the rise of Alexander the Great, the experiment in limited participatory democracy in ancient Athens came to an end after about two centuries, and Athens was absorbed into Alexander's empire.
With the rise of Octavian (later known as Caesar Augustus), the ancient Roman Republic came to an end after about five centuries, as Octavian transformed the appearances of the old Roman Republic into the new Roman Empire, with himself as the first emperor.
With the rise of secret research in World War II on the atomic bomb, the appearances of the old American Republic came to an end after about a century and a half, as various presidents transformed the old American Republic into the new National Security State, with each successive president in turn as the commander-in-chief of the new National Security State.
In effect, the new National Security State overturned and reversed the cause for which the American Revolution had been fought and for which the U.S. Constitution had been written.
But, hey, aren't most Americans today happy to live in the new National Security State, with each successive president as the commander-in-chief of the National Security State?
After all, Dick Cheney is.
But Garry Wills isn't. So he rails against the new National Security State as though the spirit of 1776 and the U.S. Constitution were still alive in the hearts of Americans today.
But how many Americans will pay attention to his railing? Didn't the spirit of 1776 and the U.S. Constitution die with the rise of the new National Security State?
Thomas J. Farrell, author of Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication (The Hampton Press Communication Series (Media Ecology).)
It's "the bomb"! February 23, 2010
James D. ODell (Camarillo, California)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Insightful and thorough, this book is required reading for people concerned about the health and maintenance of our national experiment, a democracy in a republic, transformed over time into something that the Founders never intended. Political partisans may take issue with parts of what Garry Wills writes, but the facts are irrefutable. In recent history, we have seen a deliberate, calculated assault on the U.S. Constitution by people dreaming of establishing a new Roman-style empire based on perpetual warfare, just like the old one. The insidious introduction of a "parallel government" in the Bush Administration subverted everything that this country has stood for, and died for. Well before the controversial "bailouts" of financial institutions, the bloated national security infrastructure built at the expense of genuine well-being threatened to bankrupt the country.
Hearkening to the cautionary words written by Alistair Cooke, in the early 1970s, it remains to be seen whether this nation will give up basic freedoms in exchange for "bread and circuses."
Jim O'Dell
Buellton, CA
Important, challenging and very accessible March 1, 2010
C. J. Roberts (Deptford, NJ USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
General Groves was given charge of the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons and end World War II. He had an enormous budget and operated at a level of secrecy even the Vice President didn't know what was going on. So few people could discuss the project, wacky ideas crept in: e.g. making more and more bombs so as to absorb all the available uranium and plutonium and make any challenge unthinkable.
Since the Manhattan Project, secrecy has progressively become a general pattern of U.S. governance creating a cult of the President as Commander in Chief. Democracy is being challenged. Our government "by the people, of the people and for the people" has acquired distinctly regal qualities. What should the regular U.S. Citizen do about it? A previous reviewer complains that Wills "... does not offer much in the way of a solution to the problem ...". My response is what more can he do? He stuck his neck out writing this book, now it is up to us to promote it and generate peaceful action. First things first and let's make sure of the facts. I am waiting to see if any knowledgeable one and two star reviews appear on amazon.com. Meanwhile I happily award five stars for an interesting, challenging and very accessible book.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
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