Glenna Matthews received her Ph.D. from Stanford University. Among her major publications are “Just a Housewife”: The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America, The Rise of Public Woman: Woman’s Power and Woman’s Place, 1630–1970, and, most recently, The Golden State in the Civil War: Thomas Starr King, the Republican Party, and the Birth of Modern California, which is the focus of this conversation. She has been associate professor at Oklahoma State University and a visiting associate professor at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley and at Los Angeles.