Heather Cox Richardson is an expert in the history of America, focusing on politics, economics, Reconstruction, and the West. She is the author of several books on the Civil War and Reconstruction, including, most recently, West From Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (2007), Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre (2010), and To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party (2014). She is a professor of history at Boston College, where she has taught since 2010.