An Evening with Garry Wills

Author and historian Garry Wills joined Friends of the LBJ Library members on Tuesday, March 10, 2015 to speak about his latest book, The Future of the Catholic Church with Pope Francis. Former LBJ Library Director Betty Sue Flowers served as moderator.

- About the book
The New York Times bestselling historian takes on a pressing question in modern religion—will Pope Francis embrace change?

Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope and the first from the Americas, offers a challenge to his church. Can he bring about significant change? Should he?

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 perdure. 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.

- About Garry Wills
Wills is an author of more than 20 books including What Jesus Meant as well as a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.

In 1993, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, which describes the background and effect of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. In 1998, he won the National Medal for the Humanities. He has also won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

He is an adjunct professor of history, both American and cultural, at Northwestern University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.