Heather Cox Richardson

Heather Cox Richardson is a professor in the History Department at Boston College. She is an expert in nineteenth-century America, specializing in politics and economics. Her books include How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America; To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party; and Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre. She has also written on reconstruction, the gilded age, and the American West.

Richardson is known to wider audiences for writing the Letters from an American newsletter and for co-hosting the podcasts Freak Out and Carry On and Now & Then. She is president of The Historical Society, an organization designed to bring academic history to general readers. Richardson holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.