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Garry Wills

July 2024
1min read


Professor of history, Northwestern University

Most overrated:

Harry S. Truman. The dropper of the bombs, the founder of the CIA, the father of the Attorney General’s list: he deserves worse than he has gotten.

Most underrated:

James Wilson. A signer of the Declaration, the author of Pennsylvania’s improved constitution of 1790, a principal drafter of the federal Constitution, the principal ratifier of it, and the profoundest theorist of it, Wilson is the least known of the great founders.

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