Rating: 
Summary: Not a typical biography
Review: Heard the taped version of John Wayne's America by Gary Wills . . . this was not a typical biography . . . it gave some background information on Wayne, but most of the emphasis was about how his life acquired a larger political meaning . . . the author effectively traced this, using Wayne's appearance as a young, individualistic cowbody hero (Stagecoach) to middle-aged authority figure weighed down with responsibility (Sergeant Stryker) to cool, determined patriot in the midst of cold war danger (Davey Crockett) to elderly lone survivor of past heroic time (True Grit) . . . this book helps explain why John Wayne remains one of our most popular American heroes--even after his death . . . I know look forward to revisiting some of "The Duke's" movies, but will now view them in a somewhat different context.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I like Gary Wills, and I don't write negative reviews on Amazon hardly a tall, but I thought this book was much less than it could have been. While it contains a great deal of information, it is a poorly organized hodge podge that can't decide whether it wants to be a biography of Wayne, a detailed history of the making of his motion pictures, or a meditation on pop culture. Some passages are terrific, but it should have either been boiled down into a 60-80 page essay or had much more time and effort spent on whipping the manuscript into shape. It is probably strongest in its description of the interplay of personalities, art, and business in the making of Wayne's early films, and weakest in its description of how Wayne as an icon affected mid-century America.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I like Gary Wills, and I don't write negative reviews on Amazon hardly a tall, but I thought this book was much less than it could have been. While it contains a great deal of information, it is a poorly organized hodge podge that can't decide whether it wants to be a biography of Wayne, a detailed history of the making of his motion pictures, or a meditation on pop culture. Some passages are terrific, but it should have either been boiled down into a 60-80 page essay or had much more time and effort spent on whipping the manuscript into shape. It is probably strongest in its description of the interplay of personalities, art, and business in the making of Wayne's early films, and weakest in its description of how Wayne as an icon affected mid-century America.
Rating:
Summary: Looking Into A Legend
Review: John Wayne's America is a book for the true John Wayne enthusiast. Throughout the book, Gary Wills traces the creation of an American icon through the movies and directors that formed it. Wills uses seemingly every "John Wayne" movie ever made citing specific examples for his points. Needless to say, unless one has some base in John Wayne's movies or a SEVERE interest in cinematography, Wills' dialogue can be a somewhat challenging reading. Although director John Ford played a major role in the making of the American icon, Wills seems to lose focus and starts chasing the career of Ford. As hard as this book was to read, it was written well, and should be included in any collection of biographies of this truly American legend.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of Backgound
Review: John Wayne's America is based on the figure John Wayne. Garry Wills has put so much backgound into this book that it really blowns u away. Not in a bad but the reading of some 300 pages with discriptions of just about everything kinda gets boing after a while. I grew up watching John Wayne with my father and the way that Garry Wills describes him is not what I would picture the duke as being. The book was good though to pass the winter of kansas by. So I'm sure that a more experienced read would come to say that my review was false. However, this is an opinion review and that was my opinion of this book. Garry Wills is a good writer he just doesn't show his best work in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of Backgound
Review: The idea for this book as outlined in the introduction is intriguing. Garry Wills attempts to write a 'biography of an idea', how John Wayne's on screen persona was fabricated over the years and how it differed from his real life character. I think this objective however is only partially achieved.
Wayne in real life differed dramatically from how he was presented on screen (should this be surprising? He was after all an actor, and a good one in my opinion). Mention is made of his dislike for horse riding, his preference for suits over jeans and his efforts to stay out of the military during World War II, all of which were in marked contrast to his movie roles.
However in neglecting to include much detail on his life off the screen, we are forced to assume these dramatic contrasts between fiction and reality existed, without much in the way of illustration. Wills includes an anecdote from the filming of "They Were Expendable" in 1945, regarding Wayne's humiliation on the set by John Ford over his failure to serve in the military during WWII. A few years later Wayne filmed "The Sands of Iwo Jima", which essentially was a Cold War rallying call to arms, made with the approval of the US military. Did Wayne's war record therefore lead to any embarrassment or controversy over this film? The author doesn't discuss this so we don't know.
Much of the book is taken up with more general discussions on the plot and characterisations in Wayne's more important films, and contains nearly as much discourse on John Ford than anyone else. Granted this is intended to show how directors such as Ford, Raoul Walsh and Howard Hawks developed his on screen persona, however the problem is that we are always not given enough insight into the actual Wayne.
In fairness, this book should still please Wayne fans, and if anything it contains interesting detail on directors such as Ford, Walsh etc. Personally however, I think it would probably be more worthwhile reading a conventional biography of John Wayne, rather than looking at him obliquely through this book.
Rating:
Summary: Sure, it was an interesting read, but...
Review: There is an excellent essay hidden away in this book. The question is does one have the time to search it out? Some interesting insights into the making of Stagecoach (cf stuntrider Yak Canutt)and The Searchers, and some analysis of the genesis and making of The Green Berets which is frankly hilarious, but much too much padding for my taste. I remain really interested in what drives that fascinating thing, The American Mind, and if there is a collective consciousness. I realise it remains true that Arnold Schwarzenegger is better known in small villages in India than their Prime Minister but that still doesn't explain the acceptance of Wayne as the Great American Hero. Wayne's huge popularity as pointed out in the book does point to a significant part of America has an image of itself that is inherent in Wayne's persona.
Rating: 
Summary: A fresh look at a great Actor
Review: This book is essentially a discussion about an idea. American values, & culture came to be influenced by the films & film roles of John Wayne, & the author explores that in great detail. This book helped me understand why I admire the courage, resolution, dignity, & strength that his characters displayed, & why I admire Wayne's ability to disappear into the skin of whatever character he played.
Rating:
Summary: Spotty Trail
Review: This is a maddening book, so full of promise it never really delivers on. Yet I've read it twice, something I don't usually do. Though some might argue, the subject is an important one: the mythic stature of John Wayne as American hero. Given his unparalleled popularity over the years, Wayne's elevation poses some serious questions. Namely, how did this fame come about, and what does the elevation of a cowboy actor to national icon reveal about ourselves. Understanding this revered status should at least tell us something about the mind-set of American men, if not women (Wayne has never been as popular with the latter as with the former, Wills observes). I think it helps to get at the way Wills presents the Wayne phenomenon to target three levels. First, there is Wayne the person, the man. Wills doesn't devote much space to this level, though the book's subtitle, i.e. "The Politics of Celebrity", might suggest otherwise. Very little is presented of Wayne's personal life or controversial political stances. Most of what is presented are efforts to either debunk popular fictions from the early years, or to pass along opinions of others, which about the man are usually unflattering, (Ford's disapproval of Wayne's lack of war service). Clearly the author believes Wayne's mythic status comes from the screen and not from the private individual. The second level is Wayne the actor, the commanding screen presence. Despite many insights along the way, Wills falters badly by spending way too much time on seemingly irrelevant details of John Ford's personality and film style, many of which (the diagrams of seating arrangements in "Stagecoach", for example), shed no light on Wayne the actor. Wills' s preoccupation with Ford to the exclusion of Wayne is a serious defect, which may imply that the author found Ford the more compelling of the two, and could not restrain himself. Yet it is not Ford who is enshrined in the national consciousness, it is Wayne. The third level is the most important: Wayne the mythic figure, the mirror in which we catch our own reflection. Here Wills both succeeds and fails. He succeeds by linking the Wayne figure with some of our most enduring national myths: unbounded western horizons, uncorrupted primitive, Jeffersonian ideal. But here in the book's last chapter, which should bring together the preceding 300 pages but which is only 12 pages long, there is no real synthesis of what has gone before. There is no effort at showing how, despite the many pages given over to him, Ford' romanticized vision of the Old West shapes the Wayne myth, or how that same vision embodies enduring national myths, or how to a lesser degree Hawk's vision taps into those same legends through the Wayne figure. In short, Wills fails at this crucial third stage to adequately fill in the blanks between Wayne the actor and Wayne the myth. I get the feeling the author intended a deeper work than is there in the result, but instead got sidetracked on underdeveloped details that end up shedding little light on the Wayne phenomenon. Too bad, because there is an important project still unfulfilled. Certainly Wills has the skills to bring it off. I only wish he had.
Rating:
Summary: Spotty Trail
Review: This is a maddening book, so full of promise it never really delivers on. Yet I've read it twice, something I don't usually do. Though some might argue, the subject is an important one: the mythic stature of John Wayne as American hero. Given his unparalleled popularity over the years, Wayne's elevation poses some serious questions. Namely, how did this fame come about, and what does the elevation of a cowboy actor to national icon reveal about ourselves. Understanding this revered status should at least tell us something about the mind-set of American men, if not women (Wayne has never been as popular with the latter as with the former, Wills observes). I think it helps to get at the way Wills presents the Wayne phenomenon to target three levels. First, there is Wayne the person, the man. Wills doesn't devote much space to this level, though the book's subtitle, i.e. "The Politics of Celebrity", might suggest otherwise. Very little is presented of Wayne's personal life or controversial political stances. Most of what is presented are efforts to either debunk popular fictions from the early years, or to pass along opinions of others, which about the man are usually unflattering, (Ford's disapproval of Wayne's lack of war service). Clearly the author believes Wayne's mythic status comes from the screen and not from the private individual. The second level is Wayne the actor, the commanding screen presence. Despite many insights along the way, Wills falters badly by spending way too much time on seemingly irrelevant details of John Ford's personality and film style, many of which (the diagrams of seating arrangements in "Stagecoach", for example), shed no light on Wayne the actor. Wills' s preoccupation with Ford to the exclusion of Wayne is a serious defect, which may imply that the author found Ford the more compelling of the two, and could not restrain himself. Yet it is not Ford who is enshrined in the national consciousness, it is Wayne. The third level is the most important: Wayne the mythic figure, the mirror in which we catch our own reflection. Here Wills both succeeds and fails. He succeeds by linking the Wayne figure with some of our most enduring national myths: unbounded western horizons, uncorrupted primitive, Jeffersonian ideal. But here in the book's last chapter, which should bring together the preceding 300 pages but which is only 12 pages long, there is no real synthesis of what has gone before. There is no effort at showing how, despite the many pages given over to him, Ford' romanticized vision of the Old West shapes the Wayne myth, or how that same vision embodies enduring national myths, or how to a lesser degree Hawk's vision taps into those same legends through the Wayne figure. In short, Wills fails at this crucial third stage to adequately fill in the blanks between Wayne the actor and Wayne the myth. I get the feeling the author intended a deeper work than is there in the result, but instead got sidetracked on underdeveloped details that end up shedding little light on the Wayne phenomenon. Too bad, because there is an important project still unfulfilled. Certainly Wills has the skills to bring it off. I only wish he had.
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