The following description comes from the event organizer.

H.W. (Henry William) Brands was born in Oregon, went to college in California, sold cutlery across the American West, and earned graduate degrees in mathematics and history in Oregon and Texas. He taught at Vanderbilt University and Texas A&M University before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History.

Brands’s latest book, Founding Partisans, narrates how the country’s first years unfolded in a contentious spiral of ugly elections and blatant violations of the Constitution. Still, peaceful transfers of power continued, and the nascent country made its way towards global dominance, against all odds. Founding Partisans is a powerful reminder that fierce partisanship is a problem as old as the nation.

He lectures frequently on historical and current events and can be seen and heard on national and international television and radio. He publishes history-themed poetry on Twitter and “A User’s Guide to History” on Substack.