Heather Cox Richardson is a political historian who uses facts and history to make observations about contemporary American politics. She has written about the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the American West in award-winning books whose subjects stretch from the European settlement of the North American continent to the history of the Republican Party through the Trump administration. She is the author, most recently, of the best-selling Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America. Join the discussion over at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com, where we talk about history, politics, and the relationship between image and reality in America.