PERSON: Heather Cox Richardson

Professor of History

Heather Cox Richardson (born October 8, 1962) is an American historian who works as a professor of history at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains Indians. She previously taught history at MIT and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Richardson has authored seven books on history and politics. In 2019, she started publishing Letters from an American, a nightly newsletter that chronicles current events in the larger context of American history. Richardson focuses on the health of American democracy. The newsletter has gained over one million subscribers, making her (as of December 2020) the most successful individual author of a paid publication on Substack.

Born in Chicago in 1962 and raised in Maine, Richardson attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. She received her AB, MA, and PhD from Harvard University, where she studied under the historians David Herbert Donald and William Gienapp.

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