Gordon Wood, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of American Revolution, dies at 92

By — Hillel Italie, Associated Press Hillel Italie, Associated Press Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/gordon-wood-pulitzer-prize-winning-historian-of-american-revolution-dies-at-92 Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Gordon Wood, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of American Revolution, dies at 92 Arts Jun 8, 2026 1:01 PM EDT NEW YORK (AP) — Gordon S. Wood, the eminent and prolific scholar who forged a highly influential and sharply debated narrative of the country's early years of independence through such prize-winning works as "The Creation of the American Republic" and "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," has died. He was 92. Wood, a professor emeritus at Brown University, died Sunday after being struck by a car in a supermarket parking lot, according to police in East Providence, Rhode Island. Author of dozens of books and essays, Wood never gained the mass audience of historians like David McCullough and Doris Kearns Goodwin, but his findings became standard references for discussions about the formation of the U.S. and the legacy of the revolution. Many peers regarded the white-haired, mild-looking Wood as the embodiment of the learned, traditional historian, guided by facts rather than ideology. In 2011, President Barack Obama presented him a National Humanities Medal "for scholarship that provides insight into the founding of the nation and the drafting of the U.S. Constitution." In recent years, younger academics increasingly alleged that Wood was too well-established, the epitome of the old-school historian who minimized the lives of slaves, women and Indigenous people. John L. Brooke, a history professor at Ohio State University, would fault him for "a distinct avoidance of interpretative paradox and complexity," even as he cited Wood's "scale and scholarly enterprise." His success was immediate and lasting. His first book, "The Creation of the American Republic," won the Bancroft Prize in 1970 and lived on with generations of students who embraced and contended with Wood's findings that the Constitution was unintentionally subversive, a document devised by elites that led to "the destruction of the very social world they had sought to maintain." His "The Radicalism of the American Revolution" won the Pulitzer in 1993 and the epic "Empire of Liberty" was a finalist in 2009. Silver screen moment Wood's name also was familiar to moviegoers through the Academy Award-winning "Good Will Hunting," released in 1997. The lead character, a pugnacious, self-taught genius played by Matt Damon, taunts a Harvard undergraduate: "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." (Ideas, Wood would point out, that he did not endorse). A few years earlier, Wood received an unexpected and uncomfortable compliment from then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich,