George Will
George F. Will (1941-) is a prominent U.S. columnist, author and commentator on politics and society, as well as an authority on baseball While identified as a conservative, his writing is usually considered well-researched and noninflammatory, and evaluating ideas on their merits. He is syndicated in over 450 newspaper, and is a contributing editor and Sunday morning panelist for ABC News.
Before journalism, he taught political philosophy at Michigan State University and the University of Toronto, and worked on the Senate staff of Gordon Allott. He became a syndicated columnist in 1974, in the Writers' Group established by Katherine Graham and Bill Bradlee of the Washington Post. Prior to starting a column for Newsweek in 1976, he was Washington editor for National Review.
n 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
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.
Education
- Trinity College (Hartford)
- Oxford University
- Princeton University
Will was born in Champaign, Illinois, and was educated at Trinity College in Hartford, and Oxford and Princeton universities. Prior to entering journalism, Will