Jon Grinspan is the award-winning curator of political history at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. His work explores the deep history– and fraught present –of American democracy. He is the author of three books, most recently Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War. Grinspan has also published numerous articles and op-eds, primarily in The New York Times, and has been profiled in The New Yorker, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. As a Smithsonian curator, he collects objects from political events to help tell the story of America's past and present to museum-goers in the future.