GORDON S. WOOD is Alva O. Way Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. His books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution, the Bancroft Prize-winning The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History, and Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, for the Oxford History of the United States. He writes frequently for The New York Review of Books, among other publications. In 2011 Wood was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama.