R. Eli Paul is the former director of the Missouri Valley Special Collections at the Kansas City Public Library. His public history career has spanned four decades, including previous tenures at the Nebraska State Historical Society, Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, and the National World War I Museum. Paul is the author or editor of several books, including Eyewitness at Wounded Knee (Nebraska, 2016), Autobiography of Red Cloud: War Leader of the Oglalas, and Blue Water Creek and the First Sioux War, 1854–1856.