A cum laude graduate of Phillips Academy (1968), he received his AB, magna cum laude, in History and Literature in 1972 from Harvard College, and his PhD, in the History of American Civilization in 1977, from Harvard University, where he lived in Lowell House.
In 2008, the Division on American Literature to 1800 of the Modern Language Association honored him with its Distinguished Scholar award.
[10] In 2020, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina named him to the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, a state-wide citizen's honor.
[11] Gura is a student of old-time Appalachian music, and plays both the banjo, in the clawhammer style, and the fiddle.
[12] In his teenage years and early twenties, he was an avid birder, and his voluminous journals and correspondence (1964–1987), pertaining both to ornithology and to his studies in American literature and culture, reside in the Harvard University Archives.