Kathryn S. Olmsted is chair of the history department at the University of California, Davis. A historian of anticommunism, she is the author of several books, including Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism (The New Press), Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI, Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley, and Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. She lives in Davis, California.