Gordon Wood’s Honest Approach to History

In 1992, I joined one of National Review’s early cruises, where I found myself one night seated at dinner next to Newt Gingrich. Gingrich was about to become the first Republican Speaker of the House in almost 40 years — indeed, the first of my lifetime since Massachusetts’s Joseph Martin had surrendered the gavel in January 1955, a month before I was born. But Gingrich had older history on his mind that night. I was writing a book about George Washington; Gingrich urged me to read two books, Citizen Tom Paine by Howard Fast, and The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood. Fast’s book was Popular Front patriotism; Wood was a serious scholar of the founding, worth anyone’s time.

Our paths crossed now and again. Wood invited me to write the article on George Washington in an encyclopedia of the Enlightenment whose American entries he was compiling. He was amused when — my journo synapses firing — I submitted on time, and a bit short. Speed and brevity, it seems, were not common in the academy. I reviewed Empire of Liberty, his contribution to the Oxford History of the United States, for NR, and Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson for the New York Times Book Review. What was noteworthy about the second book was that, while Wood clearly sympathized with Adams as a thinker — tough-minded, realistic — and as a man — honest, forthright — he gave Jefferson credit for better understanding the spirit and direction of their country. It was a measured judgment, and an argument against preference, characteristic of Wood’s integrity.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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In 1992, I joined one of National Review’s early cruises, where I found myself one night seated at dinner next to Newt Gingrich. Gingrich was about to become the first Republican Speaker of the House in almost 40 years — indeed, the first of my lifetime since Massachusetts’s Joseph Martin had surrendered the gavel in January 1955, a month before I was born. But Gingrich had older history on his mind that night. I was writing a book about George Washington; Gingrich urged me to read two books, Citizen Tom Paine by Howard Fast, and The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood. Fast’s book was Popular Front patriotism; Wood was a serious scholar of the founding, worth anyone’s time.

Our paths crossed now and again. Wood invited me to write the article on George Washington in an encyclopedia of the Enlightenment whose American entries he was compiling. He was amused when — my journo synapses firing — I submitted on time, and a bit short. Speed and brevity, it seems, were not common in the academy. I reviewed Empire of Liberty, his contribution to the Oxford History of the United States, for NR, and Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson for the New York Times Book Review. What was noteworthy about the second book was that, while Wood clearly sympathized with Adams as a thinker — tough-minded, realistic — and as a man — honest, forthright — he gave Jefferson credit for better understanding the spirit and direction of their country. It was a measured judgment, and an argument against preference, characteristic of Wood’s integrity.