Walter Nugent was the Andrew V. Tackes Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame from 1984 to 2000, and is now emeritus. From 1963 to 1984 he was a member of the History Department at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he also served as Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, Director of University Overseas Study Programs, and chair of the Department of History.  He has written thirteen books, beginning with The Tolerant Populists: Kansas Populism and Nativism  (University of Chicago Press, 1963; 2d ed., 2013). Nugent was president of the Western History Association in 2006.  He has published widely in Western history, notably Into the West: The Story of Its People (Knopf, 1999), Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion (Knopf, 2008), and most recently Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950-2016 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018).