Heather Cox Richardson on the Real Genius of America

Heather Cox Richardson is one of today’s unlikeliest social media stars. The Boston College historian has been teaching and writing about 19th-century America, Reconstruction, and the Civil War for decades. But it was only in 2019 that her work took off when she began writing her daily newsletter, Letters from an American, a no-nonsense analysis of the news through the lens of US history.

The newsletter became one of the most popular on Substack. And today, Richardson has millions of loyal fans who rely on her to make sense of American politics and provide a little sanity and democratic reassurance even as she herself is concerned about the direction of the country today.

“I’m worried about where we’re going. Just don’t even start me,” Richardson tells host Al Letson. “But I am heartened in this moment by the number of people who are rediscovering that they do have agency to change the future. And of course, that’s always been the story of our democracy.”

On this week’s More To The Story, Richardson talks about the decades-long failure to hold corrupt American leaders accountable, the still-resonant death of Reconstruction, and what she sees as the tragic hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson.

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