Feb 9, 2010
Seattle, WA – 02/09/10 – Town Hall – Garry Wills
By: readinglocalseattle Categories: Events
| Who | Garry Wills |
| When |
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
7:30pm
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$5
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All Ages
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| Where |
1119 Eighth Avenue
Seattle, WA, USA 98101 Town Hall is Seattle's community culture center located in the historic First Hill neighborhood, on the edge of downtown. Town Hall showcases the community's cultural energy with diverse music, arts and humanities, civic discourse, and world culture programming. Housed in an historic Roman-revival-style building on the corner of 8th and Seneca, Town Hall opened in March 1999. Local, national and international programs and performances are scheduled year-round in the Great Hall and Downstairs at Town Hall. Please visit our calendar of events for a current listing of public events. Town Hall's name recalls town-meeting democracy and is emphasized by the intimate, curved, amphitheater-style seating of the Great Hall. Town Hall is a 501c3 nonprofit organization and relies on rentals, membership, volunteers, and fundraising to sustain its many activities. Town Hall is fully accessible. Assisted listening devices are available for events in the Great Hall upon request. |
| Other Info | 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. T |
