Historian of #VastEarlyAmerica, gender, family & politics | Director & Librarian @ JCBLibrary | History Prof @ Brown U
#LineageTheBook OUP July, 2025 | On some other platforms and also @ karinwulf.com | Opinions here just mine.
Karin Wulf
Condolences and tributes poured in on Monday for Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood after the revered expert on the American Revolution was hit and killed by a motor vehicle in a Rhode Island parking lot on Sunday.
W/ @stephmachado.bsky.social
www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/08/m...
Gordon Wood died yesterday at 92 after being struck by a car in East Providence. He was my Phd advisor and I recall some experiences with him. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/gordo...
My grievance has always been why not more about the grievances? And lo, Rob Parkinson delivers, brilliant as ever! A book for 2026 indeed.
Ooh wait I know the answer to this.
I’m rarely at a loss for words but today I don’t have many for the enormity and the complexity of Gordon Wood’s legacy - I was inspired by his work even as I agreed with about 1/2 and was often irritated by the rest. RIP. A real one. www.brown.edu/news/2026-06...
Lots more to say but for now just noting that I’m traveling - and carrying Gordon’s 2021 (updated for 2026) book bc I’m doing a reading event w a Brown alum group next week. Had just told him about it. GSW 1933-2026
I really enjoyed this piece by @yappelbaum.bsky.social. I am going to be thinking about this particular paragraph, based on an interview with historian @johannneem.bsky.social, for the rest of the day. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202... (Gift Link) #America250
Last point: I worked for two years at @oieahc.bsky.social. What a crash course in scholarly publishing! If you want your work thoroughly vetted as a scholar, they’re #1. They—me, for two years!—check every citation! A real person does this! (Many people are involved!) Quality and standards are real!
Hey look, rich folks pledging to leave in the face of tax increases rather than help shoulder collective burdens is a time-honored tradition older than the republic itself.
(From Blackhawk’s Rediscovery of America.)
Wood died after being hit by a car in a parking lot in East Providence on Sunday. “You had the feeling that you were in the presence of an Olympian,” said fellow historian Ted Widmer.
RIP Gordon Wood, whose “Creation,” p.562, is worth a reread any day, esp. today: “the Federalists fixed the terms for the future discussion of American politics …. and created a distinctly American political theory but only at the cost of eventually impoverishing later American political thought.”
