Historian · Author · Professor
Truth really can be stranger than fiction.
Heather Salter brings to life overlooked lives, intimate archives, and the reach of the global into the local for readers who want more than the standard stories of the past.
History with a human pulse.
Heather’s work begins where the historical record becomes personal: in letters, classified archives, photographs, court documents, and the quiet particulars that make another era legible.
As a historian, author, and professor, she writes with scholarly care and a storyteller’s eye—connecting readers to the surprising stories that still echo in the present.
About Heather
A life in pursuit of the stories that shape our world.
Heather Salter is a historian, author, and professor at Northeastern University whose work brings the texture and complexity of the past into focus for contemporary readers. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Duke University and is the author of three monographs and five co-authored or co-edited books including, most recently, The Shanghai Agents: The Soviet Plot to Start a Revolution in Interwar China (2026). Her early travels overseas inspired a lifetime interest in people who fought against colonialism, which later translated to a career researching, writing, and teaching about it. She has also published under the name Heather Streets-Salter and Heather Streets.
Praise for The Shanghai Agents
"A sweeping, high-stakes saga of spies and revolutionaries in the turmoil of 1930s East and Southeast Asia"
"A compelling glimpse of a city and a time that is not at the pivot between two worlds, but at the intersection of many."
"Fascinating--an extraordinary story."
Reviews of The Shanghai Agents
"As Heather Salter, a professor at Northeastern University, reveals in "The Shanghai Agents," a compelling work of historical noir, Yakob and Tatyana were central figures "in an enormous and expensive Soviet conspiracy to foment revolution in China and the wider region from their base in Shanghai."...Ms. Salter's book offers a deeply personal case study that illuminates the extensive underground network of Soviet-aligned anticolonial local communists operating in Asia prior to World War II."
Reviewed by Maura Elizabeth Cunningham in The Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2026
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/the-shanghai-agents-review-committed-to-the-comintern-5b6aa589?msockid=0f92c7b04a6e6eb2278fc8c94b0a6f91
"Salter has written what has to be the definitive account of this episode. She has also written a book that readers who are interested in modern Chinese history, Russian machinations in China, intelligence tradecraft, the Comintern, or a good spy stories will enjoy."
Reviewed by Martin Petersen in The Cipher Brief, August 20, 2026
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/book-review/shanghai-spies-aliases-lies-and-extraterritoriality