Gordon Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown. His latest book is The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States.
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In Quest of Blood Lines
May 23, 2013
Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America
by François Weil
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Was the Big Revolution in 1775?
December 20, 2012
1775: A Good Year for Revolution
by Kevin Phillips
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Roger Williams on His Own
October 25, 2012
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When We Burned Canadian York
September 27, 2012
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Mr. Madison’s Weird War
June 21, 2012
1812: The Navy’s War
by George C. Daughan
James Madison
by Richard Brookhiser
James Madison: Son of Virginia and a Founder of the Nation
by Jeff Broadwater
Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War: America’s First Couple and the Second War of Independence
by Hugh Howard
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Radical, Pure, Roger Williams
May 10, 2012
Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty
by John M. Barry
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American Dream Money
November 10, 2011
Moneymakers: The Wicked Lives and Surprising Adventures of Three Notorious Counterfeiters
by Ben Tarnoff
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Letters Not for Burning
October 27, 2011
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Second-Rank Americans
October 13, 2011
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Those Sentimental Americans
May 12, 2011
First Family: Abigail and John
by Joseph J. Ellis
Abigail and John Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility
by G.J. Barker-Benfield
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Good Losers
March 10, 2011
Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World
by Maya Jasanoff
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No Thanks for the Memories
January 13, 2011
The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History
by Jill Lepore
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The Real Washington at Last
December 9, 2010
George Washington’s America: A Biography Through His Maps
by Barnet Schecter
Washington: A Life
by Ron Chernow
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The War We Lost—and Won
October 28, 2010
The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies
by Alan Taylor
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Was Washington ‘Mad for Glory’?
June 10, 2010
An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson
by Andro Linklater
The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon
by John Ferling
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Praying with the Founders
May 1, 2008
Ten Tortured Words: How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America…and What’s Happened Since
by Stephen Mansfield
So Help Me God: The Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle over Church and State
by Forrest Church
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What America Started
November 8, 2007
The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788–1800
by Jay Winik
American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic
by Joseph J. Ellis
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‘Illusions’ of the Founders
October 11, 2007
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Reading the Founders’ Minds
June 28, 2007
Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution
by Lawrence Goldstone
American Taxation, American Slavery
by Robin L. Einhorn
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Without Him, No Bill of Rights
November 30, 2006
James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights
by Richard Labunski
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American Religion: The Great Retreat
June 8, 2006
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation
by Jon Meacham
The Faiths of the Founding Fathers
by David L. Holmes
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‘Righteous Anger’
May 11, 2006
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Apologies to the Iroquois
April 6, 2006
The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution
by Alan Taylor
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How Democratic Is the Constitution
February 23, 2006
America’s Constitution: A Biography
by Akhil Reed Amar
Righteous Anger at the Wicked States: The Meaning of the Founders’ Constitution
by Calvin H. Johnson
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Founders & Keepers
July 14, 2005
A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America
by Stacy Schiff
John Adams: Party of One
by James Grant
John Jay: Founding Father
by Walter Stahr
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The Making of a Disaster
April 28, 2005
Iron Tears: America’s Battle for Freedom, Britain’s Quagmire: 1775–1783
by Stanley Weintraub
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What Slavery Was Really Like
November 18, 2004
Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World
by Trevor Burnard
Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation
by Rhys Isaac
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The Shopper’s Revolution
June 10, 2004
The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence
by T.H. Breen
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The Hidden France
March 11, 2004
George Washington’s False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century
by Robert Darnton
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Uncle Ben
December 4, 2003
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
by Walter Isaacson
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Only in America
September 25, 2003
The Road to Home: My Life and Times
by Vartan Gregorian
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Debt and Democracy
June 12, 2003
Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence
by Bruce H. Mann
A Free Nation Deep in Debt: The Financial Roots of Democracy
by James Macdonald
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Creating the Revolution
February 13, 2003
To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders
by Bernard Bailyn
Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunites for Study
by Bernard Bailyn
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
by Bernard Bailyn
The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson
by Bernard Bailyn
The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction
by Bernard Bailyn
Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution
by Bernard Bailyn, with Barbara DeWolfe
The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century
by Bernard Bailyn
Pamphlets of the American Revolution
edited by Bernard Bailyn and Jane N. Garrett
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Wise Men
September 26, 2002
Benjamin Franklin
by Edmund S. Morgan
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Rambunctious American Democracy
May 9, 2002
How Democratic Is the American Constitution?
by Robert A. Dahl
On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding
by Michael Novak
James Madison
by Garry Wills
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In the American Grain
June 21, 2001
John Adams
David McCullough
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Tocqueville’s Lesson
May 17, 2001
Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop
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The Greatest Generation
March 29, 2001
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation Joseph J. Ellis
The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire Francis Jennings
Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government
Catherine Allgor
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All in the Family
February 22, 2001
An American Family: The KennansThe First Three Generations by George F. Kennan
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Early American Get-Up-and-Go
June 29, 2000
Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans
by Joyce Appleby
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An Affair of Honor
April 13, 2000
Alexander Hamilton, American
by Richard Brookhiser
Republican Empire: Alexander Hamilton on War and Free Government
by Karl-Friedrich Walling
A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr
by Arnold A. Rogow
Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America
by Thomas Fleming
Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character
by Roger G. Kennedy
Scandalmonger
by William Safire
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The American Love Boat
October 7, 1999
Sentimental Democracy: The Evolution of America’s Romantic Self-Image
by Andrew Burstein
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The Bloodiest War
April 9, 1998
The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity by Jill Lepore
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Doing the Continental
November 20, 1997
The Americas in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1850 by Lester D. Langley
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Dusting Off the Declaration
August 14, 1997
American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier
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The Sally Hemings Case
June 12, 1997
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Liberty’s Wild Man
February 20, 1997
The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800 by Conor Cruise O'Brien
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The Would-Be Gentleman
August 8, 1996
William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic by Alan Taylor
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Not So Poor Richard
June 6, 1996
Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies by Robert Middlekauff
The Devious Dr. Franklin, Colonial Agent: Benjamin Franklin’s Years in London by David T. Morgan
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An Exchange on James Madison
May 23, 1996
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‘The Writingest Explorers’
April 4, 1996
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen E. Ambrose
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The Founding Realist
October 19, 1995
If Men Were Angels: James Madison and the Heartless Empire of Reason by Richard K. Matthews
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Disturbing the Peace
June 8, 1995
Tom Paine: A Political Life by John Keane
Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom by Jack Fruchtman Jr.
Thomas Paine: Collected Writings edited by Eric Foner
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Not a Liberal
December 1, 1994
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The Wandering Jewish Prophet in New York
October 20, 1994
The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America by Paul E. Johnson, by Sean Wilentz
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Inventing American Capitalism
June 9, 1994
The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 17801860
by Christopher Clark
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Land: The Plunder of Early America
by Daniel M. Friedenberg
The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism by Allan Kulikoff
From Market-Places to a Market Economy: The Transformation of Rural Massachusetts, 17501850
by Winifred Barr Rothenberg
The Origins of American Capitalism: Selected Essays by James A. Henretta
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Jefferson at Home
May 13, 1993
Jeffersonian Legacies edited by Peter S. Onuf
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Novel History
June 27, 1991
Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) by Simon Schama
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Americans and Revolutionaries
September 27, 1990
Revolutions: Reflections on American Equality and Foreign Liberations by David Brion Davis
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Struggle Over the Puritans
November 9, 1989
The Puritan Ordeal by Andrew Delbanco
To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism
by Theodore Dwight Bozeman
Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England by David D. Hall
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Among the Straussians
April 14, 1988
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The Fundamentalists and the Constitution
February 18, 1988
The American Founding: Politics, Statesmanship, and the Constitution edited by Ralph A. Rossum, edited by Gary L. McDowell
The Complete Anti-Federalist edited by Herbert J. Storing
“The Constitutional Order, 17871987” edited by Irving Kristol, edited by Nathan Glazer
Constitutionalism and Rights edited by Gary C. Bryner, edited by Noel B. Reynolds
The Founders’ Constitution edited by Philip B. Kurland, edited by Ralph Lerner
The Framing and Ratification of the Constitution edited by Leonard W. Levy, edited by Dennis J. Mahoney
The Moral Foundations of the American Republic
edited by Robert H. Horwitz
Saving the Revolution: “The Federalist Papers” and The American Founding edited by Charles R. Kesler
Taking the Constitution Seriously
by Walter Berns
The Thinking Revolutionary: Principle and Practice in the New Republic
by Ralph Lerner
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Hellfire Politics
February 28, 1985
The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-Interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism
by John Patrick Diggins
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Politics Without Party
October 11, 1984
Presidents Above Party: The First American Presidency, 17891829
by Ralph Ketcham
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Apple Pie
April 12, 1984
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History Lessons
March 29, 1984
The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam by Barbara W. Tuchman
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The Revenge of Aaron Burr
February 2, 1984
Political Correspondence and Public Papers of Aaron Burr edited by Mary-Jo Kline, with Joanne Wood Ryan
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This Land Is Our Land
February 3, 1983
The Fall of the First British Empire: Origins of the War of American Independence by Robert W. Tucker, by David C. Hendrickson
A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760-1790 by Edward Countryman
Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority, 1750-1800 by Jay Fliegelman
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Writing History: An Exchange
December 16, 1982
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Star-Spangled History
August 12, 1982
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 Woodward, general editor.) (Volume II of the Oxford History of the United States, C. Vann, by Robert Middlekauff
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Looking for Heroes
February 18, 1982
The Vineyard of Liberty Volume One of “The American Experiment” by James MacGregor Burns
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The Disappointments of Jefferson
August 13, 1981
The Sage of Monticello Volume Six of “Jefferson and His Time” by Dumas Malone
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Heroics
April 2, 1981
Explaining America: The Federalist by Garry Wills