Home from seeing “Pressure” … really enjoyed it! The D-Day sequence alone is worth the price of admission.

With his sober and serious scholarship, the historian was among the last of his generation. | @RBrookhiser nationalreview.com/2026/06/g…

"His was not the reflexive patriotism that turns away from hard facts, but the harder kind that looks straight at them and still finds something extraordinary." My obituary for Gordon Wood in @realDailyWire. Thanks @TimRiceDC for inviting me to write it. dailywire.com/news/america-j…

My tribute to the late Gordon Wood for @TheAtlantic theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0…

Nazi analogies and Weimar warnings are everywhere in politics these days. They usually backfire. Evoking the ghosts of Germany's past doesn't tackle present-day challenges. Using Hitler comparisons is just bad politics, I argue in the Washington Post👇 wapo.st/4dTXw2s

On Sunday, my friend Gordon Wood was struck and killed in a car accident. Gordon taught history at Brown Univ. and was among the most accomplished historians America has produced. He won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for The Radicalism of the American Revolution, and his earlier book The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 took the 1970 Bancroft Prize. He also received the National Humanities Medal. He was, in my view, the finest historian of America's founding—which makes it all the sadder that he did not live to see the nation's 250th birthday. His reputation reached popular culture, too. Matt Damon's character in Good Will Hunting invokes him by name in the famous bar scene, accusing a Harvard student of simply "regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about [...] the pre-Revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization." I feel fortunate to have collaborated with Gordon on several projects. In a 2019 anthology I compiled, he wrote an essay on the possibility of a shared American narrative. He centered his argument on equal rights as "the most radical and most powerful ideological force" the Revolution unleashed. "This powerful sense of equality is still alive and well in America," he wrote, "and despite all of its disturbing and unsettling consequences, it is what makes us one people." When I needed jacket blurbs for my new book Lincoln's Compass, coming out this November, I turned to Gordon. The fit was natural: the book argues that Abraham Lincoln took the Declaration's claim that "all men are created equal" as his guiding moral compass—and that he refocused the nation on that claim. Gordon, ever the gentleman, offered generous praise. He was, in many respects, the dean of American historians. He will be very hard to replace.

Very sad news. His writings shaped my undergraduate career. I met him one time at a conference (truly a brush with greatness—as we literally ran into each other while turning a corner). His scholarship among my favorite to re-read. golocalprov.com/news/pulitze…

June 6, 1944. Indianapolis Times. #DDay

BBC Radio newsreader John Snagge gives the first news of the D-Day landing at 9:32 AM to the British public.

📜 From the archives: The weight of history in one memo. June 5, 1944. Take a look at the weather reports and discussions that led to the defining moment of the D-Day invasion. See the exact deliberations behind the famous command, "Okay, we’ll go." June 6, 1944. @USNatArchives

Greatness. Eisenhower's note, written today, in which he takes full responsibility - "mine alone" - in the event that D-Day fails.

Tonight, Is the night, Of nights.

It's D Day. 4,427 Allied soldiers died today so that generations not even born, like mine, could grow up in freedom. See more at substack.com/@alexkershaw

D-Day is underway. Some would argue that what's happening right now is the most daring and ultimately successful operation in the history of military Alliances. Note: the majority of troops are friends of the US from eight countries. Eisenhower has been told that three-quarters of the 23,400 airborne troops will be lost. He's hoping that the prediction will be wrong.

It's 4.15 am in England. Ike says quietly, "Ok. Let's go." D Day is on. Here he is, 20 years later. @WWIIMemorial

A storm is raging outside. Again they meet. Again they are briefed on the weather. There is a new development. A break in the weather, a window of hope, a chance that things might just work - 6 June. Do they stay or do they go? Only one man can decide, Eisenhower, surrounded by his team. Everything has been staked on one roll of the dice. The "whole works on one number," he wrote. Stay or go?