Media reports indicate that Brown University Professor Gordon Wood passed away at the age of 92 yesterday, apparently killed by a passing car while walking. Wood was the greatest historian of the Founding era and the ideology of the American Revolution, author of such seminal works as The Creation of the American Republic and The Radicalism of the American Revolution, among many other important works. He had an enormous influence on generations of historians, legal scholars and many others.
In addition, his work on the universalist Enlightenment liberal political ideals of the Revolution and the Founding is a compelling antidote to both right-wing ethno-nationalists (who envision the US as a nation based on ties of race, ethnicity, and culture), and far-left claims that the Founding was primarily about promoting slavery and white supremacy.
