Political historian Heather Cox Richardson was at home in Maine on Sept. 15, 2019, when she was stung by a yellow jacket. She’s allergic and had forgotten to refill her EpiPen prescription. Exasperated by her carelessness, her brother-in-law, who was there, told her, “If you don’t die, I’m going to kill you.” As she waited for the swelling to subside, she interrupted a six-week hiatus from Facebook and wrote a post contextualizing the political events of the day for her roughly 22,000 followers.
“Am back and ready to write, but now everything seems like such a dumpster fire it’s very hard to know where to start,” Richardson began. “So how about a general overview of how things at the White House look to me today …”
Feeling better hours later, the history professor drove from Maine to the campus of Boston College to teach. Upon arriving in her office, she found that thousands of readers had responded to the previous night’s post with questions. So, she answered back, with more historical context. Over the subsequent months, her following climbed to hundreds of thousands, and readers began asking her to start a newsletter.
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