Opinion Archive: George Will

About George Will

George Will

George F. Will is one of the most widely recognized, and widely read, writers in the world. With more than 450 newspapers, his biweekly Newsweek column, and his appearances as a political commentator on ABC, Will may be the most influential writer in America.

Will began his syndicated column with The Writers Group on Jan. 1, 1974, just four months after The Writers Group was founded by Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham. Two years later Will started his back-page Newsweek column.

In 1977, he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, for his newspaper columns, and garnered awards for his Newsweek columns, including a finalist citation in the Essays and Criticism category of the 1979 National Magazine Awards competition. He was also the recipient of a 1978 National Headliners Award for his "consistently outstanding special features columns" appearing in Newsweek. A column on New York City's finances earned him a 1980 Silurian Award for Editorial Writing. In January 1985, The Washington Journalism Review named Will "Best Writer, Any Subject." He was named among the 25 most influential Washington journalists by the National Journal in 1997.

Today Will serves as a contributing analyst with ABC News and has been a regular member of ABC's "This Week" on Sunday mornings since 1981.

Eight collections of his Newsweek and newspaper columns have been published: The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Sobering Thoughts (Harper & Row, 1978); The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions (Simon & Schuster, 1982); The Morning After: American Successes and Excesses 1981-1986 (Macmillan, 1986); Suddenly: The American Idea Abroad and at Home 1986-1990 (The Free Press, 1990); The Leveling Wind: Politics, the Culture & Other News 1990-1994 (Viking, 1994); The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric, 1994-1997 (Scribner, 1997); With a Happy Eye But ... America and the World 1997-2002 (The Free Press, 2002); and One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation (Crown Forum, 2008).

Other books include: Statecraft as Soulcraft (Simon & Schuster, 1983), a work of political philosophy that originally appeared as the Godkin Lecture at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in 1981; The New Season: A Spectator's Guide to the 1988 Election (Simon & Schuster, 1987) which prefaced the 1988 presidential campaign; and Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball (Macmillan, 1989) which topped national best-seller lists in the number-one position for over two months. His book titled Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy (Macmillan, 1992) argued for the need to limit politicians' time in office.

Will was born in Champaign, Illinois, and was educated at Trinity College in Hartford, and Oxford and Princeton universities. Prior to entering journalism, Will taught political philosophy at Michigan State University and the University of Toronto, and served on the staff of U.S. Sen. Gordon Allott. Until becoming a columnist for Newsweek, Will was Washington editor of the National Review, a leading conservative journal of ideas and political commentary.

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