21 Facts About Garry Wills

Garry Wills was born on May 22,1934 and is an American author, journalist, political philosopher, and historian, specializing in American history, politics, and religion, especially the history of the Catholic Church.

Garry Wills won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1993.

Garry Wills became a faculty member of the history department at Northwestern University in 1980, where he is an Emeritus Professor of History.

Garry Wills was born on May 22,1934, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Garry Wills was reared as Catholic and grew up in Michigan and Wisconsin, graduating in 1951 from Campion High School, a Jesuit institution in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

Garry Wills entered and then left the Society of Jesus.

Garry Wills earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Saint Louis University in 1957 and a Master of Arts degree from Xavier University in 1958, both in philosophy.

Garry Wills received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in classics from Yale University in 1961.

Garry Wills taught history at Johns Hopkins University from 1962 to 1980, and is a fellow at the University of Edinburgh.

Garry Wills was married for sixty years to Natalie Cavallo, a collaborator and photographer for his work.

Garry Wills describes himself as a Roman Catholic and, with the exception of a period of doubt during his seminary years, has been a Roman Catholic all his life.

Garry Wills continues to attend Mass at the Sheil Catholic Center in Northwestern University.

Garry Wills prays the rosary every day, and wrote a book about the devotion in 2005.

Garry Wills has been a critic of many aspects of church history and church teaching since at least the early 1960s.

Garry Wills published a full-length analysis of the contemporary Catholic Church, Bare Ruined Choirs, in 1972 and a full-scale criticism of the historical and contemporary church, Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit, in 2000.

Garry Wills followed up the latter with a sequel, Why I Am a Catholic, as well as with the books What Jesus Meant, What Paul Meant, and What the Gospels Meant.

However, during the 1960s and 1970s, driven by his coverage of both civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War movements, Garry Wills became increasingly liberal.

Garry Wills supported Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, but declared two years later that Obama's presidency had been a "terrible disappointment".

In 1995, Garry Wills wrote an article about the Second Amendment for The New York Review of Books.

Garry Wills neither wrote the title nor approved it prior to the article's publication.

Martin Gardner in "The Strange Case of Garry Wills" states there is a "mystery and strangeness that hovers like a gray fog over everything Wills has written about his faith".