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, including the story of the Republican Party and the Wounded Knee Massacre. Most recently, she published the book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, a 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. On September 19, 2024, Heather Cox Richardson came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an on-stage conversation with Steven Winn.