Commonwealth Club of California features Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills. He argues that the atomic bomb paved the way for presidential authority that has “enfeebled” Congress and the courts, and that reached its apex with George W. Bush.

Wills frames the postwar period in a new light in his aim to sound an alarm about a continued threat to our Constitution and the balance of power. Wills wrote The Modern Presidency and the National Security State.