Gordon S. Wood
Wood in 2008
Born	Gordon Stewart Wood[1] (1933-11-27)November 27, 1933 (age 91) Concord, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupations	Historian author
Children	3, includingChristopher
Awards	Pulitzer Prize (1993) Bancroft Prize (1970) National Humanities Medal (2010)
Academic background
Education	Tufts University (BA) Harvard University (MA,PhD)
Doctoral advisor	Bernard Bailyn
Academic work
Discipline	History
Institutions	College of William and Mary Harvard University University of Michigan Brown University Cambridge University Northwestern University

Gordon Stewart Wood (born November 27, 1933) is an American historian and professor atBrown University. He is a recipient of the 1993Pulitzer Prize for History forThe Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992). His bookThe Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (1969) won the 1970Bancroft Prize. In 2010, he was awarded theNational Humanities Medal by PresidentBarack Obama.

Wood was born inConcord, Massachusetts, and grew up inWorcester andWaltham. He graduatedsumma cum laude andPhi Beta Kappa fromTufts University in 1955 and has served as atrustee there. After serving in theUnited States Air Force inJapan, during which time he earned anM.A. atHarvard University, he entered thePh.D. program in history at Harvard, where he studied underBernard Bailyn, receiving his PhD in 1964.

Wood has taught atHarvard University, theCollege of William and Mary, theUniversity of Michigan,Brown University, and in 1982–83 wasPitt Professor atCambridge University.

In addition to his books (listed below), Wood has written numerous influential articles, notably "Rhetoric and Reality in theAmerican Revolution" (1966), "Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century" (1982), and "Interests and Disinterestedness in the Making of theConstitution" (1987). He is a frequent contributor toThe New York Review of Books andThe New Republic.

A recent project was the third volume of theOxford History of the United States –Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009) – a finalist for thePulitzer Prize.

Contributing to the anthologyOur American Story (2019), Wood addressed the possibility of a shared American narrative. He focused on the idea of equality as "the most radical and most powerful ideological force" that theAmerican Revolution unleashed. "This powerful sense of equality is still alive and well in America, and despite all of its disturbing and unsettling consequences, it is what makes us one people."^[2]Wood was elected as a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988^[3] and theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1994.^[4]

Speaker of the HouseNewt Gingrich publicly and effusively praised Wood'sThe Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992). Wood, who met Gingrich once in 1994, surmised that Gingrich may have approved because the book "had a kind of Toquevillian touch to it, I guess, maybe suggesting American exceptionalism, that he liked". He jokingly described Gingrich's praise in an interview onC-SPAN in 2002 as "the kiss of death for me among a lot of academics, who are not right-wing Republicans."^[5]

Wood was mentioned in the 1997 filmGood Will Hunting. In one scene,Matt Damon's character mentions Gordon Wood while standing up to a Harvard student who is ridiculingBen Affleck's character at a bar. He accuses the Harvard student of shallowly reiterating ideas he has encountered in his coursework, telling him that soon he would be "regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about [...] the pre-Revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization."^[6] Wood said of the scene, "That’s my two seconds of fame! More kids know about that than any of the books I have written."^[7] This scene was later parodied by the television showIt's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, in which the characterCharlie Kelly attempts to "pull a Good Will Hunting" and asks "does no one know who Gordon Wood is?"

Wood married the former Louise Goss on April 30, 1956. They have three children.^[1]

This list isincomplete; you can help byadding missing items.(July 2021)

External videos
Booknotes interview with Wood onThe American Revolution: A History, April 21, 2002,C-SPAN
Interview with Wood onThe Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, June 4, 2004,C-SPAN
Presentation by Wood onRevolutionary Characters, May 30, 2006,C-SPAN
After Words interview with Wood onRevolutionary Characters, July 1, 2006,C-SPAN
Q&A interview with Wood onThe Purpose of the Past, April 13, 2008,C-SPAN
Presentation by Wood onThe Purposes of the Past, September 27, 2008,C-SPAN
Presentation by Wood onEmpire of Liberty, October 7, 2009,C-SPAN
Presentation by Wood onEmpire of Liberty, September 25, 2010,C-SPAN
Presentation by Wood onThe Idea of America, May 18, 2011,C-SPAN
Presentation by Wood onThe Idea of America, November 29, 2011,C-SPAN
Presentation by Wood onFriends Divided, November 1, 2017,C-SPAN
Q&A interview with Wood onFriends Divided, December 17, 2017,C-SPAN

• The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1969.
• The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. (ISBN 978-0679736882)
• The American Revolution: A History. New York:Modern Library, 2001. (ISBN 978-0812970418)
• The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. New York:Penguin Press, 2004. (ISBN 978-0143035282)
• Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different. New York: Penguin Press, 2006. (ISBN 978-0143112082)
• The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History. New York: Penguin Press, 2008. (ISBN 978-0143115045)
• Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815. New York:Oxford University Press, 2010. (ISBN 978-0199832460)
• The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States. New York: Penguin, 2011. (ISBN 978-0143121244)
• Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. New York: Penguin, 2017. (ISBN 978-0735224735)
• Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution. New York:Oxford University Press, 2021. (ISBN 978-0197546918)

• Revolution and the Political Integration of the Enslaved and Disenfranchised. Washington, DC:American Enterprise Institute, 1974. (ISBN 978-0844713045)
• The Making of the Constitution. Waco, Texas:Baylor University Press, 1987. (ISBN 978-0918954541)
• Monarchism and Republicanism in the Early United States. (Melbourne, Australia:La Trobe University, 2000.

• (WithJ.R. Pole)Social Radicalism and the Idea of Equality in the American Revolution. Houston, Texas:University of St. Thomas, 1976.
• (With others)The Great Republic. Boston: Little, Brown, 1977; 4th ed.: Lexington, Massachusetts:Heath, 1992.

• Leadership in the American Revolution. Washington, DC:Library of Congress, 1974.
• Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Peter Onuf and Jan Lewis (eds.), Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1999.
• To the Best of My Ability: The American Presidency.James M. McPherson (ed.). New York:Society of American Historians, 2000.
• "Can the United States Be One People?"Our American Story.Joshua Claybourn (ed.), Lincoln, Nebraska:Potomac Books, 2019. (ISBN 978-1640121706)

• Representation in the American Revolution. Charlottesville, Virginia:University of Virginia Press, 1969. (ISBN 978-0813927220)
• The Rising Glory of America, 1760–1820. New York:George Braziller, 1971. Rev. ed.: Boston:Northeastern University Press, 1990. (ISBN 978-1555530907)
• The Confederation and the Constitution. Boston:Little, Brown, 1973.
• With Louise G. Wood.Russian-American Dialogue on the American Revolution. Columbia, Missouri:University of Missouri Press, 1995.
• With Paul A. Gilje et al.Wages of Independence: Capitalism in the Early American Republic. Rowman & Littlefield, 1997. (ISBN 978-0945612520)
• With Anthony Molho.Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past. Princeton, New Jersey:Princeton University Press, 1998. (ISBN 978-0691058115)
• John Adams: Revolutionary Writings 1755–1783 (2 vols.). New York: The Library of America, 2011. (ISBN 978-1598530902)
• The American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate 1764–1776 (2 vols.). New York: The Library of America, 2015. (ISBN 978-1598533781)
• John Adams: Writings from the New Nation 1784–1826. New York: The Library of America, 2016. (ISBN 978-1598534665)

• "Gordon S. Wood", Faculty Webpage, Brown University
• Gordon S. Wood, "The Learning of Liberty for Civic Life"^{[permanent dead link]}, lectures at Boston University
• Gordon S. Wood atIMDb
• Appearances onC-SPAN
  • In Depth interview with Wood, September 5, 2010

• 1933 births
• 21st-century American historians
• 21st-century American male writers
• Brown University faculty
• Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
• Harvard University faculty
• Harvard University Department of History faculty
• Historians of the American Revolution
• Historians of the United States
• Living people
• National Humanities Medal recipients
• People from Concord, Massachusetts
• Bancroft Prize winners
• Pulitzer Prize for History winners
• College of William & Mary faculty
• Tufts University alumni
• University of Michigan faculty
• Academics of the University of Cambridge
• Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows
• Historians from Massachusetts
• American male non-fiction writers
• Members of the American Philosophical Society

• Articles with short description
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• Articles with hCards
• Incomplete lists from July 2021
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• Articles with dead external links from December 2022
• Articles with permanently dead external links
• People appearing on C-SPAN