Native Cook County Democrat, Cubs fan, and long-time historian of the American Revolution and Constitution
Jack Rakove
Loading...
Coincidentally the official band of the Stanford Department of History (more or less--it's a one-degree-of-separation thing).
Jack Rakove
Otherwise I might have dropped out of grad school straight off. Instead it became an inspiration to my own ambition. And his second big book, Radicalism (a draft of which he dropped off at our house when he finished his sabbatical at CASBS in 1987) was remarkable in a number of other ways.
His first book was fundamental to everything I have done since I started grad school--indeed the first thing Bud Bailyn had me do in his grad seminar in the fall of 1969 was to go to the Widener archives to read his dissertation. Fortunately I was too young to grasp what a profound project it was.
It would have been a happier day had this festschrift to Gordon Wood been published a tad earlier, but fate intervened. I am one of the eleven contributors, along with Gordon's own response. The title of my essay is Being Schooled with Gordon Wood.
yaleconnect.yale.edu/YJLH/yjlh-is...
I just received the terribly distressing news that Gordon Wood was hit by a car and killed yesterday. We were together with other Founding era scholars at the 2nd Judicial Circuit conference last week at Lake George, and he was as usual in fine fettle and as always enjoyable to talk to.
