Historian Gordon Wood talked about his life, career, and his books on the American Revolution, the making of the Constitution, and the importance of historical study. He responded to telephone calls and electronic communications.A video was shown from earlier in the week as he gave a tour of his office in his home in Providence, Rhode Island, and his nearby office at Brown University. He talked about his writing and research methods. Professor Brown also reacted to a video clip of Ralph Nader talking about Benjamin Franklin during his "In Depth" interview on August 1, 2010.
Gordon Wood is the award-winning author of several books including The Creation of the American Republic 1776 - 1787 (1969), winner of the Bancroft and John H. Dunning prizes, and The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Gordon Wood has taught at William and Mary, Harvard, the University of Michigan and Cambridge. He is Alva O. Way University Professor Emeritus at Brown University.
His other books include: Revolution and the Political Integration of the Enslaved and Disenfranchised (1974); The Making of the Constitution (1987); The American Revolution: A History (2001); The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (2004); Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (2006); The Purpose of the Past: Reflections of the Uses of History (2008); Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (2010).