Providence, RI--Dr. Gordon Wood, the Alva O. Way University Professor and professor of history at Brown University, delivered the first Rodney Delasanta Honors Lecture recently at Providence College.

In his lecture, Wood called America's founding fathers "the greatest generation" in our nation's history. His talk was based on his recent book, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different? (Penguin Press, 2006). He is also the author of The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (University of North Carolina Press, 1969), The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Knopf, 1992), which won the Pulitzer Prize for History, and The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (Penguin Press, 2004).

In his lecture, Wood painted a vibrant picture of America's revolutionary heroes, calling them "larger than life" and "giants of the earth." He claimed that theirs was the greatest generation in U.S. history-a generation with intellectual and political capacities that have never been equaled. Much of his talk was an explanation of how and why the founding fathers achieved such greatness.

"Our revolutionary leaders were obsessed with the formation of character," he said. According to Wood, these leaders were first-generation gentlemen. Many were the first in their families to go to college. They willingly absorbed the culture of the 18th-century enlightenment and attempted to become gentlemen characterized by morality, education, tolerance, virtue-in many ways the opposite of the over-refined English aristocrat of their day.

Wood received his bachelor's degree from Tufts University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He taught at Harvard and the University of Michigan before joining the Brown faculty in 1969.

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