Few people can grasp how American politics reached its current complexity, but Heather Cox Richardson uses her direct and approachable style, and brilliant academic background as a historian, to make sense of this country’s past, present, and future. Her book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, traces our lost histories to discover how we became who we are today.
Even before her explosively popular Substack Letters from an American, which has grown to more than two million subscribers since it began in 2019, historian Heather Cox Richardson was an important voice in discussions around post-Civil War American history. The author of seven books, Richardson’s writing has focused on race, economics, and political ideology, delving into many histories, including the story of the Republican Party and the Wounded Knee Massacre. She has co-hosted podcasts, including Now & Then and NPR’s Freak Out and Carry On. In 2022 Richardson interviewed President Biden and was named one of USA Today’s Women of the Year. Most recently, she published the book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, a brilliant yet deeply accessible deep dive into how a small group of wealthy people pushed the government towards authoritarianism, and how understanding the real history of America’s most marginalized people can help us move back towards a real democracy. Richardson’s plain-spoken optimism, and insights drawn from a career studying the creation of the modern United States, has captivated readers, helping uncover the true past and possible futures for the country.
Steven Winn is a San Francisco writer and critic whose work has appeared in Musical America, the New York Times, Opera, and the San Francisco Chronicle, where he was the paper’s Arts and Culture Critic from 2000-2008. Winn’s memoir, Come Back, Como; Winning the Heart of a Reluctant Dog, has been translated into nine languages. His past City Arts & Lectures interviews include Patti LuPone, Frances McDormand, Tony Kushner, Louise Erdrich, Steve Martin, and David Brooks.
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