About the Program

Brown University professor Gordon Wood has been teaching early American history since the mid-1960s. He was awarded the Bancroft Prize in 1970 for his book "The Creation of the American Republic, 1776- 1787" and the Pulitzer Prize, over twenty twenty years later, for his book "The Radicalism of the American Revolution." In his latest, titled "Revolutionary Characters," Professor Wood assesses the contributions of eight of America’s founding fathers. He discusses his book with historian Richard Norton Smith, former director of the presidential libraries of Abraham Lincoln, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Mr. Smith, currently on the faculty of George Mason University, is the author of several books, including "Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation." He is currently working on a biography of Nelson Rockefeller.