Gordon S. Wood
| Gordon Stewart Wood[1] | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 27, 1933 Concord, Massachusetts |
| Nationality |  United States |
| Fields | History |
| Institutions | College of William and Mary Harvard University University of Michigan Brown University Cambridge University Northwestern University School of Law |
| Alma mater | Harvard University Tufts University |
| Doctoral advisor | Bernard Bailyn |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize (1993, 2010) Bancroft Prize (1970) |
Gordon S. Wood (born November 27, 1933) is Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University and the recipient of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Radicalism of the American Revolution. His book The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 won a 1970 Bancroft Prize.
Gordon Wood was born in Concord, Massachusetts and grew up in Worcester and Waltham. He graduated summa cum laude from Tufts University in 1955 and has served as a trustee there. After serving in the U.S. Air Force in Japan, during which time he earned an A.M. at Harvard University, he entered the Ph.D. program in history at Harvard, where he studied under Bernard Bailyn. Receiving his Ph.D. in 1964, he taught briefly at Harvard, the College of William and Mary, and the University of Michigan, before joining the faculty at Brown in 1969. He was also Pitt Professor at Cambridge University in 1982-83 and has lectured for One Day University. He lectures at many universities and institutes. In September of 2009, Wood lectured - The Origins of the American Constitution at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. In addition to his books (listed below), he has written a number of influential articles, notably "Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution" (1966), "Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth century" (1982), and "Interests and Disinterestedness in the Making of the Constitution" (1987). He is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New Republic. His most recent project, the 1789-1815 volume in the Oxford History of the United States series entitled Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, was published in October 2009.
[edit] Family
He married the former Louise Goss, April 30, 1956. They have three children, Christopher, Elizabeth and Amy.[1] His son, Christopher Wood, is a professor of art history at Yale University and his daughter, Amy Wood, is a professor of history at Illinois State University.
[edit] In popular culture
Two interesting incidents of name-dropping in the 1990s increased Wood's name recognition among the general public. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich publicly and effusively praised Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution, which led to adverse reactions from some liberals in academia and was jokingly described by Wood in an interview on C-SPAN in 2002 as "the kiss of death." [2]
Wood was also prominently mentioned in the movie Good Will Hunting. The exchange between Matt Damon's character and an obnoxious Harvard graduate student seems to have been based mainly on an obscure 1994 New York Review of Books article by Wood that discussed James T. Lemon's writings and on a subsequent letter to the editor by Lemon rather than on Wood's more well-known writings.
More recently, his name appeared in an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, wherein Charlie attempts to put some fraternity members in their place by incorrectly imitating Damon's performance.
[edit] Publications
- The Creation of the American Republic, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1969.
- (Editor) Representation in the American Revolution, University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 1969.
- (Editor) The Rising Glory of America, 1760-1820, George Braziller (New York, NY), 1971, revised edition, Northeastern University Press (Boston, MA), 1990.
- (Editor) The Confederation and the Constitution, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1973.
- Revolution and the Political Integration of the Enslaved and Disenfranchised, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (Washington, DC), 1974.
- (Contributor) Leadership in the American Revolution, Library of Congress (Washington, DC), 1974.
- (With J.R. Pole) Social Radicalism and the Idea of Equality in the American Revolution, University of St. Thomas (Houston, TX), 1976.
- (With others) The Great Republic, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1977, 4th edition, Heath (Lexington, MA), 1992.
- The Making of the Constitution, Baylor University Press (Waco, TX), 1987.
- (Editor) Rising Glory of America, 1760-1820, Northeastern University Press (Boston, MA), 1990.
- The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Alfred A. Knopf (New York, NY), 1992.
- (Editor, with Louise G. Wood) Russian-American Dialogue on the American Revolution, University of Missouri Press (Columbia, MO), 1995.
- Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1998.
- (Editor, with Anthony Molho) Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1998.
- Monarchism and Republicanism in the Early United States, La Trobe University (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 2000.
- The American Revolution: A History, Modern Library (New York, NY), 2001.
- The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, Penguin Press (New York, NY), 2004.
- Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, Penguin Press (New York, NY), 2006.
- The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History, Penguin Press (New York, NY), 2008.
- Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2010.
- Book contributions
- Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture, edited by Peter Onuf and Jan Lewis, University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 1999
- To the Best of My Ability: The American Presidency, edited by James M. McPherson, Society of American Historians (New York, NY), 2000.
- Contributor of articles to periodicals
- Contributor of book reviews to periodicals, including
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2010. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2010. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC. Document Number: H1000107915. Retrieved 2010-06-22
- ^ National Cable Satellite Corporation (21 April 2002). "Booknotes". Transcript of an interview with Wood by Brian Lamb on C-SPAN's Booknotes. http://www.booknotes.org/Program/?ProgramID=1672. Retrieved 29 September 2009.
[edit] External links
- Faculty Webpage
- Gordon S. Wood, lectures at Boston University on History and Civic Education: The Learning of Liberty for Civic Life.
