Early Years
Wills was born in Atlanta, Georgia and grew up in Michigan and Wisconsin, graduating from Campion High School, a Jesuit institution, in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin in 1951. He entered and then left the Jesuit order.
He earned a B.A. in philosophy from Saint Louis University in 1957 and an M.A. from Xavier University in 1958. Both his B.A. and his M.A. were in philosophy. William F. Buckley, Jr. hired him as a drama critic for National Review magazine at the age of 23. He received his PhD in classics from Yale University in 1961, and taught history at Johns Hopkins University from 1962 to 1980.
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