Rate My Professor Kathryn Olmsted

Olmsted is the author of five books, including The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler (Yale University Press, 2022), which received the Sperber Book Prize for the best journalism memoir or biography in 2023; Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism (The New Press, 2015); Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11 (Oxford University Press, 2009); Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley (University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (University of North Carolina Press, 1996). She co-edited The Central Intelligence Agency: Security Under Scrutiny (Greenwood Press, 2006). Her articles have appeared in journals including Pacific Historical Review, Journal of Contemporary History, Diplomatic History, Modern American History, and Journal of Policy History. Olmsted has received the Distinguished Teaching Award from the UC Davis Academic Senate in 2006, the Excellence in Teaching Award from Northern California Phi Beta Kappa in 2009, a Fellowship from Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge in 2014, the Herbert Young Society Fellowship from 2012 to 2015, the Davis Humanities Institute Fellowship in 2005-2006, and the Faculty Development Award in 2005. She has served on the University of California Press Editorial Committee since 2017 and chaired various UC Davis Academic Senate committees, including the Committee on Research from 2011 to 2013.