For our final main episode of 2023, we're dipping back into the Wills well to discuss Garry's under-appreciated 2010 book, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State.  Joining us is our great friend <a href="https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/erik-baker">Erik Baker,</a> lecturer in the History of Science Department at Harvard University and an editor at <a href="https://www.thedriftmag.com/article_author/erik-baker/">The Drift </a>magazine. In Bomb Power, Garry Wills elegantly demonstrates how the imperatives of secretly conceiving, building, and deploying the nuclear bomb fundamentally changed American democracy — massively empowering the presidency, disempowering Congress, and setting the nation on a permanent war footing. At the same time, secrecy and deception metastasized through the American system, enabling the rise of extra-judicial assassinations, coup plotting, domestic surveillance, torture, and clandestine war.  "Secrecy emanated from the Manhattan Project like a giant radiation emission..." writes Wills, "Because the government was the keeper of the great secret, it began specializing in secret keeping.” Also discussed: Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer  (2023), Henry Kissinger (RIP), Bush and Obama, Snowden, Ellsberg, and the ways in which Bomb Power is a profoundly Catholic book. Enjoy!Sources:Garry Wills, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/298677/bomb-power-by-garry-wills/">Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State</a> (2010)Daniel Ellsberg, <a href="https://academic.macmillan.com/academictrade/9781608196708/thedoomsdaymachine">The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear Planner</a> (2017)Barton Gellman, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316047/dark-mirror-by-barton-gellman/">Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State</a> (2021)Archbishop John Wester, "<a href="https://files.ecatholic.com/17613/documents/2022/1/220111_ABW_Pastoral_Letter_LivingintheLightofChristsPeace_Official_Reduced.pdf?t=1641922875000">Living in the Light of Christ's Peace: A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament</a>," Jan 11, 2022Erik Baker, "<a href="https://thebaffler.com/latest/daniel-in-the-lions-den-baker">Daniel in the Lion's Den: On the Moral Courage of Daniel Ellsberg</a>," The Baffler, June 17, 2023John Schwenkler and Mark Souva, "<a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/false-choices">False Choices: The Unjustifiable Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki</a>," Commonweal, Oct 14, 2020...and don't forget to subscribe to <a href="https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy">Know Your Enemy on Patreon</a> for access to all of our bonus episodes!

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Bomb Power (w/ Erik Baker)

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