Jon Meacham

Jon Ellis Meacham (/ˈmiːtʃəm/; born May 20, 1969) is a writer, reviewer, and presidential biographer. A former Executive Editor and Executive Vice President at Random House, he is a contributing writer to The New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor to Time magazine, and a former Editor-in-Chief of Newsweek. He is the author of several books. He won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. He holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Endowed Chair in American Presidency at Vanderbilt University.

Meacham was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His parents are Jere Ellis Meacham (1946–2008), a construction and labor-relations executive who was decorated for valor during the Vietnam War, and Linda (McBrayer) Brodie. His paternal grandparents, Ellis K. Meacham and Jean Austin Meacham, raised him after his parents' divorce. When he was a child, his grandfather had discussions each morning with a group of men about local and national politics. As a result, Meacham developed an interest in politics. He received an invitation to Ronald Reagan's 1981 inauguration in Washington, D.C. in response to a letter that he sent to the president-elect.

He was educated at The McCallie School prep school, where he developed an interest in the civil rights movement. He earned a bachelor's degree from The University of the South in 1991.

Journalist and editor

After college, he worked at The Chattanooga Times, until he moved to Washington, D.C. in 1993 and became co-editor of Washington Monthly. In 1995, he worked for Newsweek as the national affairs editor, and became Managing Editor in late-1998. In 2006, he became Editor-in-Chief of Newsweek's print and online formats.

A former Executive Editor and Executive Vice President at Random House, he is a contributing writer to The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post, and a contributing editor to Time magazine.

Historian and book author

He was the editor for Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement that was released in 2001. Spanning the period from 1941 to 1998, the book includes writings of noted civil-rights leaders, novelists, and journalists, like John Lewis, James Baldwin, William Faulkner, and David Halberstam. His book, Franklin and Winston, Partners of an Intimate Relationship about Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, was released in 2003.

Meacham has explored America's leaders in such works as Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power as well as his biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Jill Abramson of The New York Times finds that Meacham's books are well-researched and contain a combination of current historical interpretations and anecdotal information, and capture the character of former presidents from a heroic perspective, despite their personal flaws. In his biography of Jefferson, Meacham identifies qualities that would be helpful in the current political arena, "Jefferson repeatedly reached out to his enemies and showed ideological flexibility." Regarding the former president's stance on slavery, Meacham states, "Slavery was the rare subject where Jefferson's sense of realism kept him from marshaling his sense of hope in the service of the cause of reform."

Selected by the Bush family to be the official biographer for George H. W. Bush, Meacham's book, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, was published in 2015. He gave eulogies for both President Bush and Barbara Bush when they died in 2018.

Other

From May 2010 to April 2011, Meacham was co-host with Alison Stewart of Need to Know on PBS. He is also a frequent guest on MSNBC's Morning Joe and has appeared multiple times on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher.

Meacham taught history at his alma mater, the University of the South, in 2014. He was a visiting professor of political science at Vanderbilt University before being appointed to the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Chair in American Presidency.

Awards and honorary degrees

He won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. Meacham has been awarded honorary doctorates from several universities: Dickinson College and his alma mater, The University of the South D.Litt, in May 2010; Loyola University New Orleans DHL on 12 May 2012; Wake Forest University, Middlebury College D.Litt on 28 May 2017.and the University of Tennessee DHL in December 2017; and the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2018. and Millsaps College on 11 May 2019.

As of 2014, Meacham resides in Belle Meade, Tennessee. He married Margaret Keith Smythe, called Keith, in 1996. At the time of their marriage, she was a teacher, having studied at University of Virginia and the University in Aix-en-Provence. She taught in Metz, France under a Fulbright Scholarship. They have three children.

• Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement (editor). New York: Random House. 2001. ISBN 978-0-375-75881-2.
• Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship. New York: Random House. 2003. ISBN 978-0-8129-7282-5.
• American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. New York: Random House. 2006. ISBN 978-0-8129-7666-3.
• American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. New York: Random House. 2008. ISBN 978-1-4000-6325-3.
• American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic The Civil War: A Narrative (editor). New York: Random House. 2011.
• Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. New York: Random House. 2012. ISBN 978-1-4000-6766-4.
• Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush. New York: Random House. 2015. ISBN 978-1-4000-6765-7.
• The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels. New York: Random House. 2018. ISBN 978-0-3995-8981-2.
• Impeachment: An American History. Modern Library. 2018. With Timothy Naftali, Peter Baker, and Jeffrey A. Engel.
• Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation. New York: Random House. 2019. ISBN 978-0593132951. With Tim McGraw.
• The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross (2020)