News Release

04/07/08
Brown University Scholar Gordon Wood to Speak at PPL | all related events

Gordon S. Wood, Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History, Brown University, Providence, will present “The Invention of Benjamin Franklin” on Monday, April 14, at 6:00 pm at Providence Public Library (PPL), Central Library, 150 Empire Street, (Barnard Room, 3rd Floor). Wood’s presentation kicks off six weeks of lectures, presentations and varied family programs scheduled in conjunction with the “Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World” exhibition at PPL through May 23.

Wood is an historian of Colonial America and one of this country’s foremost scholars on the American Revolution. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. In addition to his book on Franklin, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, (2004) which received the Julia Ward Howe Prize by the Boston Authors Club in 2005, his book The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992) won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize in 1993. It is considered among the definitive works on the social, political and economic consequences of the Revolution.

Wood has written numerous other works, including The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (1969), which won the Bancroft and the John H. Dunning prizes in 1970 and was nominated for the national Book Award. Gordon was involved in Ken Burn’s PBS production on Thomas Jefferson, has contributed his expertise in the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, and regularly devotes a portion of his time teaching history to high school students around the country. He is a trustee emeritus on the National Council of History Education and serves on the Advisory Board of the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History. Professor Wood is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is currently working on a volume in the Oxford History of the United States concerning the period of the early Republic from 1789 to 1815. His newest book, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, was published in 2006.

Organized by the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary, Philadelphia, in cooperation with the American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office, “Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World” was made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Special free programs and events planned in conjunction with the exhibition’s visit to Rhode Island are presented by National Grid and also sponsored by the Rhode Island Freemasons and WJAR-10.

Ben Franklin Exhibit Programs & Events at Providence Public Library

Providence Public Library is committed to providing quality programming on a variety of educational topics. The views and opinions expressed therein are those of the individual presenters and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Library. We welcome community members to work with us to provide free, thought-provoking events of interest.