Historian Heather Cox Richardson found her moment and her medium in 2019 when she began posting Letters from an American on social media. The nightly newsletter chronicles current political events in the context of American history. Richardson analyzes the day’s happenings through the lens of an academic but with a tone and vocabulary welcoming readers of all sorts. Her well-researched insights break down complex issues, providing a deeper understanding of the latest news. In these chaotic times, with people shouting from all sides, she calmly explains the historical context of the day’s events and how they relate to the maintenance of democracy. Curiously, as we see the bulwarks of democracy failing, the checks and balances eroding, and the law subverted, Richardson holds the line; she has become a reliable institution.

She takes the occasional break, posting a photo of the Maine coast, sometimes from her husband, lobsterman Buddy Poland – a glimpse into her down-to- earth life, despite her lofty credentials.

Richardson describes Letters from an American as “a chronicle of today’s political landscape, but because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American.” Richardson has described herself as a Lincoln-era Republican, with no affiliation with any political party.

In 2020, Bes Smith of The New York Times “broke the news to Heather Cox Richardson that she was the most successful individual author of a paid publication on the breakout newsletter platform Substack.” As of November 2025, her Substack had more than 2.7 million subscribers.

Richardson is a savvy social media user, layering her letters and videos across multiple channels and reaching large audiences who are hungry for this informed context. She is prolific, posting Letters and videos almost daily, while traveling and teaching.

On YouTube, her channel has more than 660,000 subscribers. Her Political Chats videos, answering questions sent in by curious-minded folks, are consistently viewed by more than 200,000 people. She also created Ten Steps to Revolution: Journey to American Democracy, which examines how ordinary people worked to make the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence the law of the land. This series explains how King George III’s American subjects came to oppose monarchy and, over the course of only thirteen years, to embrace the right to govern themselves. She also records “Explainers,” videos that explore a current event or the week as a whole.

Richardson was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1962, but grew up in Yarmouth, Maine.

She was a member of one of the first coed classes at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, graduating in 1980. After earning her Bachelor of Arts in history from Harvard University, Richardson stayed, earning her master’s degree and PhD.

She studied under the late David Herbert Donald, two-time Pulitzer Prize Winner, Lincoln biographer, and one of the most notable historians of the American Civil War and Reconstruction period. Her first book, The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War (1997), was largely based on her Harvard dissertation.

Her later books on American history – including some best-sellers – have won her praise from fellow historians and the publishing world. She has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Boston College, where she currently serves as a history professor, specializing in nineteenth-century America.

In 2016, Richardson was identified on Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist, as a college professor who “discriminate[s] against conservative students and advance[s] leftist propaganda.” Later, she recalled, “Some young grifter named Charlie Kirk had found my name online and put it onto his new website as a danger to students (send money to resist left-wing professors like Richardson!). As I stood there, watching in horror, messages came in from all over the country telling me people had my back. And then I wrote a post to reassure my friends that I was used to this sort of harassment and it would be okay, and then that post went viral, and I came off the list within days.”

In 2017-18, Richardson co-hosted with Pulitzer-Prize winning author Ron Suskind a National Public Radio podcast series, Freak Out and Carry On.  Along with their invited guests, they analyzed the Trump presidency through a historical lens, covering topics such as “Free Speech and the Politics of Football,” and “The History of Nepotism in the White House,” and “Is Our Electoral Process Broken?”

Richardson’s work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Quartz, and she has been a regular columnist for Salon. She has interviewed or been interviewed by notables such as Ken Burns, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Katie Couric, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Angus King, Maine Governor Janet Mills, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Jon Stewart.

During the current tumultuous political era, Richardson finds comfort in returning to history to read how Americans of the past preserved the republic. She says, “I believe in American democracy, despite its frequent failures.”

-authored by Sarah Pebworth (2026)