Did you know? After adjusting for inflation, Massachusetts state government spending didn’t grow at all from 2010–2019 — it held steady at about $60 B. Then came COVID, which pushed spending up to $87 B in 2021. Today, the new post-COVID normal sits just above $70 B. Explore the full trend on the MA DataLabs site:
https://loom.ly/BGwuBSU
Pulitzer Winner Gordon Wood on Benjamin Franklin & American Revolution 250
In this special American Revolution 250 episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts U-Ark Prof. Albert Cheng and Kelley Brown, Massachusetts state champion U.S. history and civics teacher, sit down with renowned Brown University historian Gordon Wood to explore the life and legacy of Benjamin Franklin and the American Revolution. Drawing on his book, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, Prof. Wood examines Franklin’s journey from obscure beginnings in colonial Massachusetts to global fame as an entrepreneur, scientist, and statesman. He discusses Franklin’s embrace of Enlightenment ideals, his rise in Philadelphia through printing, publishing and civic leadership, and his immense wealth, which fueled his image as America’s quintessential self-made man. Prof. Wood also traces Franklin’s evolution from loyal British subject and aspiring gentleman to revolutionary American patriot. In closing, he highlights Franklin’s scientific genius, his pivotal diplomatic triumph in securing the 1778 French alliance, and enduring cultural symbolism as the embodiment of American ingenuity and statesmanship.
Guest:
Gordon Wood is Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. He taught at Harvard University and the University of Michigan before joining the faculty at Brown in 1969. Wood is the author of The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, which won the Bancroft Prize and the John H. Dunning Prize, and The Radicalism of the American Revolution, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History, and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize. Professor Wood’s The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin was awarded the Julia Ward Howe Prize by the Boston Authors Club. His volume in the Oxford History of the United States, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 won the Association of American Publishers Award for History and Biography, the American History Book Prize by the New York Historical Society, and the Society of the Cincinnati History Prize. In 2011, Wood was awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Obama and the Churchill Bell by Colonial Williamsburg. His reviews appear in The New York Review of Books, and he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He earned his B.A. degree from Tufts University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
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