Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian, Dies at 92 After Being Struck by Car

Gordon S. Wood, 92, died Sunday after being struck by a vehicle in the parking lot of a Shaw's supermarket in East Providence, Rhode Island; the driver remained at the scene and was cooperative, according to police. Wood was a professor emeritus at Brown University and the author of more than ten books, including 'The Creation of the American Republic' (1969), which won the Bancroft Prize, and 'The Radicalism of the American Revolution' (1991), which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1993; 'Empire of Liberty' was a Pulitzer finalist in 2009. His central scholarly argument — that the Revolution was not merely a political break from Britain but a sweeping social transformation that made Americans 'the most liberal, the most democratic, the most commercially minded, and the most modern people in the world' — shaped generations of historians, legal scholars, and public intellectuals. Wood occupied an unusual position in his field, cited approvingly by figures ranging from President Obama, who awarded him the National Humanities Medal in 2011, to conservative politicians like Newt Gingrich and Vivek Ramaswamy, as well as the World Socialist Web Site. In later years he became a prominent critic of the New York Times' 1619 Project, though he acknowledged not having read most of it, and in 2023 he offered a partial reconsideration of his initial reaction. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Amy Louise Wood, a historian at Illinois State University, and tributes poured in from colleagues across the political spectrum who mourned both the personal loss and the symbolism of his passing on the eve of the nation's semiquincentennial.