Four Reasons You Should Know More About Gordon S. Wood, the Scholar of the American Revolution Who Died This Week at Age 92

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent Add as preferred source Gordon S. Wood was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama in 2011. Brooks Kraft LLC / Corbis via Getty Images Renowned historian Gordon S. Wood, one of the country’s preeminent scholars of the American Revolution, died this week after being struck by a car in a supermarket parking lot. He was 92 years old. An outpouring of tributes in the aftermath of the tragedy underscores Wood’s legacy. Over his decades-long career, the Brown University professor emeritus published 10 books and many articles. Wood’s key contribution to scholarship was the assertion that the American Revolution was “the most radical and far-reaching event in American history.” He argued that the events leading to independence from England in 1776 didn’t just birth a new nation politically, but fundamentally rewired the social fabric of the former colonies, “everything from how people dressed to the way they greeted each other in the streets,” writes Hillel Italie for the Associated Press. The Massachusetts-born scholar was also a staunch defender of what he viewed as objectivity in the study of history, resisting and often criticizing contemporary efforts to assess the founding fathers using modern standards. Through his study of primary documents, he asserted that the revolution turned Americans into “an ideological people,” who “had become, almost overnight, the most liberal, the most democratic, the most commercially minded, and the most modern people in the world.” Ahead of America’s semiquincentennial, here are four reasons to know the work of Gordon S. Wood. Wood’s most widely known book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History and launched him into the spotlight, writes historian Craig Bruce Smith for the Atlantic. The book weaves together anecdotes that ground readers in the era’s changing religious, political and social tides, centering the transformation of fragmented, hierarchical colonies into a democracy. He was fascinated that the desires and concerns of ordinary people helped drive the foundation of a new society, the New York Times’ David Stout writes. “He has the peculiar ability to deepen and broaden readers' understanding, pulling us all onto higher planes of historical sophistication, while provoking thoughtful doubt and dissent,” wrote historian Pauline Maier in a 1992 review of the title for the New York Times. “That is why The Radicalism of the Revolution is not only mandatory reading for anyone seriously interested in the American past, but a delight for readers who take pleasure in the act of thinking.” Wood’s scholarship was cited by figures across the political spectrum. President Barack Obama honored him in 2011 with a National Humanities Medal. Politicians Newt Gingrich and Vivek Ramaswamy admired his work. The politically conservative American Enterprise Institute named him “the greatest historian of the American Revolution.” The World Socialist Web Site brought his perspective to its readers. In 2019, Wood made headlines for his critique of the thesis of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which aimed to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” He argued that most people during the American Revolution did not consider slavery a central concern in the fight for independence and signed a letter criticizing the project as driven more by modern perspectives than historical evidence. “You can find quotation after quotation from people seriously thinking that slavery was going to wither away in several decades,” Wood said in a 2019 interview with the World Socialist Web Site’s Tom Mackaman. “Now we know they couldn’t have been more wrong. But they lived with illusions and were so wrong about so many things. We may be living with illusions too. One of the big lessons of history is to realize how the past doesn’t know its future.” In 2023, Wood reconsidered his position. “I didn’t appreciate the significance of it when it first came out in 2019,” Wood told the Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery. “What we’re involved in is a momentous time in our culture. We’re going through a great atonement, trying to atone for the 400-year legacy of slavery. The 1619 Project is an aspect of that great atonement.” Few historians have name recognition among the public, but Wood’s writings made a cameo in one of the most famous scenes of the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. “You’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about, you know, the pre-Revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization,” actor Matt Damon’s character says during an intellectual sparring match in a Boston pub. The quip earned high praise from his friends: “My boy is wicked smaht.” “That’s my two seconds of fame!” Wood told The Los Angeles Review of Books in 2015. Wo

Four Reasons You Should Know More About Gordon S. Wood, the Scholar of the American Revolution Who Died This Week at Age 92

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