Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American founding, dies at 92

Gordon S. Wood died Sunday after a car struck him in a supermarket parking lot in East Providence, Rhode Island. He was 92. Police said the incident occurred in the parking lot. Wood was a professor emeritus at Brown University and the author of dozens of books and essays on the American founding period.

His first book, “The Creation of the American Republic,” won the Bancroft Prize in 1970. The work argued that the Constitution was unintentionally subversive and altered the social world its framers had intended to preserve. His 1992 book, “The Radicalism of the American Revolution,” received the Pulitzer Prize in 1993.

A later volume, “Empire of Liberty,” covered the years 1789 to 1815 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2009. S. ” Wood’s scholarship drew both praise and criticism.

Some younger academics faulted him for giving limited attention to the experiences of enslaved people, women, and Indigenous populations. Colleagues described him as a traditional historian focused on documentary evidence rather than ideology. Wood welcomed Annette Gordon-Reed’s research on Sally Hemings.

He opposed interpretations that framed slavery as a central motive for the Revolution. “I don’t think our history should be seen as a moral tale, either good or bad,” Wood once wrote. “I think historians should try to understand where we came from as honestly as we can, without trying to say this was a great celebration or that this was a disaster.

The character played by Matt Damon mentions Wood’s work on pre-revolutionary society. Wood disputed Progressive-era historian Charles Beard’s portrait of the Constitution as a cynical triumph for the rich, but did not regard the founders as infallible sages above looking after their own interests.

He acknowledged that historians had overlooked the contributions of women and minority groups, but worried that “headline political events” were being ignored entirely.