An Evening with Heather Cox Richardson and Tom Nichols

Heather Cox Richardson is Professor of History at Boston College. 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 bestselling Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America. Jane Mayer has called the book “a vibrant, and essential history of America's unending, enraging and utterly compelling struggle since its founding to live up to its own best ideals.” Heather Richardson’s work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and The Guardian, among other outlets. Her nightly newsletter, Letters from an American, reaches over a million readers.

Tom Nichols is a bestselling author and staff writer at The Atlantic. A professor emeritus of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, he has expertise on a range of foreign policy issues including Russia, nuclear weapons, and the role of war in international affairs. Confidently contrarian, Nichols is renowned for his commentary on political issues, the decline of modern society, and threats to democracy at home and abroad. He writes The Atlantic Daily newsletter, guiding readers through the biggest news, ideas, and cultural happenings of the day. Tom’s most well-known book, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, examines the collapse of trust in experts and the increase in attacks against science and learning from a public that thinks it knows as much as experts. He makes the case that this false egalitarianism is dangerous to democracy. The book, which has been published in fifteen languages, was deemed “a sweeping indictment of the deliberate, widespread and ultimately self-destructive devaluing of knowledge in America” by POLITICO. In April 2024, Nichols returns with The Death of Expertise, Second Edition, featuring updated evidence including the COVID pandemic to prove that the assault on expertise has only intensified in the seven years since the original publication.  

In Our Own Worst Enemy, Tom examines the decline of democracy and the rise of illiberal, anti-democratic movements in the United States and elsewhere. He challenges voters in the democracies to recognize how they themselves, after years of peace and prosperity, have endangered their own system of government with their own lack of civic involvement, their sense of entitlement, and their unwillingness to support basic values such as the rule of law and the equality of others. Publisher’s Weekly called it “a searing critique of contemporary political culture and the rise of illiberalism on both the right and the left.”  

Tom Nichols has been named to the POLITICO 50, one the “key thinkers, doers, and visionaries reshaping American politics and policy.” He taught at the U.S. Naval War College for over 25 years and at the Harvard Extension School for nearly 20 years. He served as Senior Associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, as Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and is currently a Fellow of the International History Institute at Boston University. Nichols also worked as a legislative aide in the Massachusetts House and the U.S. Senate and served on Senator John Heinz’s defense and security affairs staff. Tom is a five-time undefeated Jeopardy! champion and was once listed as one of the top 100 players of the game.