Presidential Historian & Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author
Jon Meacham: Biography at a Glance
- Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham is one of America's most prominent public intellectuals.
- A skilled orator with a depth of knowledge about politics, religion, and current affairs, Meacham has the unique ability to bring history to life and offer historical context to current events and issues impacting our daily lives.
- A contributor to TIME, Meacham is a highly sought-after commentator, regularly appearing on MSNBC, CNN, and other news outlets.
- Meacham is the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers including, Songs of America and The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, and his latest, And There Was Light.
- And There Was Light earned Meacham the 2023 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, recognizing his work as a major contribution to the long line of Lincoln biographies.
- Named a “Global Leader for Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the Society of American Historians.
- Meacham is a frequent guest on Morning Joe; Real Time with Bill Maher; The 11th Hour, and was featured in Ken Burns’ documentary series The Roosevelts: An Intimate History.
Videos
Biography
Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham is one of America's most prominent public intellectuals. A contributor to TIME, Meacham is a highly sought-after commentator, regularly appearing on MSNBC, CNN, and other news outlets. A skilled orator with a depth of knowledge about politics, religion, and current affairs, Meacham has the unique ability to bring history to life and offer historical context to current events and issues impacting our daily lives - whether we realize it or not - to audiences of all backgrounds and levels of understanding.
He served as Newsweek's managing editor from 1998 to 2006 and as editor from 2006 to 2010.
Meacham released two podcasts with the History Channel: Hope Through History and It Was Said. Narrated and written by Meacham, season two of the critically acclaimed Hope Through History podcast explores some of the most historic and trying times in American History, how the nation dealt with the impact of these moments, and how we came through these moments a more unified nation. It Was Said, tells the stories of those crucial words, taking listeners back to inflection points ranging from the McCarthy era to our present time through the real-time rhetoric that shaped and suffused America as the country struggled through storm and strife. It Was Said captures the nation we've been, and points ahead to the nation we hope to become.
Meacham is the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers including, Songs of America, which is a celebration of the music that helped shape a nation. Co-written by musician Tim McGraw, Songs of America was praised as “a glorious celebration of our diversity” by Quincy Jones and an “unusually well-written and moving story” by Ken Burns. Another #1 New York Times bestseller, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, examines the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in U.S. history when hope overcame division and fear. He released, His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope - an intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis and quickly gained bestseller status.
Meacham's Presidential biography of George H. W. Bush, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list. According to the Times, “Destiny and Power reflect the qualities of both subject and biographer: judicious, balanced, deliberative, with a deep appreciation of history and the personalities who shape it.” He is a co-author of Impeachment: An American History, which reveals the complicated motives behind the three impeachments in U.S. history. A #1 New York Times bestseller, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power was hailed as "masterful and intimate" by Fortune magazine. Meacham's other national bestsellers include Franklin and Winston, American Gospel, and American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, which won a Pulitzer Prize.
Meacham is a frequent guest on Morning Joe; Real Time with Bill Maher; The 11th Hour, and was featured in Ken Burns’ documentary series The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. FOX News produced an hour-long special about Meacham’s Destiny and Power.
Named a “Global Leader for Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the Society of American Historians. Meacham is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University where he holds the Rogers Chair in the American Presidency. His latest New York Times bestseller And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle, was published in October 2022.
Topics
Hope Through History: How to Survive Turbulent Times
As difficult as the present is, the American past is the story of challenges overcome, crises resolved, and progress made. In this nonpartisan speech, Jon Meacham walks audiences through moments that have seemed intractable to offer lessons for leaders on how to endure and prevail when everything appears hopeless. The presentation is an anecdotally rich reflection on history and a forward-leaning call for constructive habits of citizenship.
Songs of America: History, Music, and the Story of a Nation
This is an illuminating and entertaining presentation of music and history, presented by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jon Meacham. With a multimedia presentation of images and iconic selections from great American songs, Meacham offers a glimpse of the American past and a message for the present: that America has always been defined by strife and discord, yet has managed to move forward.
“The Battle-Hymn of the Republic” vs. “I Wish I Was in Dixie’s Land”; “Happy Days Are Here Again” vs. “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”; “The Ballad of the Green Berets” vs. “Blowin in the Wind”; “Born in the U.S.A.” vs. “God Bless the USA”—the whole panoply of America can be traced—and more importantly, heard and felt—in the songs that echo through our public squares. This is engaging history that speaks to the moment and beyond.
The Art of Leadership: Lessons From the American Presidency
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham explores what 21st-century leaders in different fields of endeavor can learn from the greatest moments of our common past.
This non-partisan presentation features lessons ranging from Jefferson's pragmatism and JFK's capacity to recover from his own mistakes to the management of conflicting egos as shown by Reagan and FDR and how George HW Bush dealt with the end of his Presidency. Meacham discusses how history can inform the decisions all of us make every day in positions that demand creative and innovative solutions.
Lincoln In Our Time: What the Life of Abraham Lincoln Can Teach Us About Leadership, Citizenship, and How We Can Overcome Division
In this presentation, Jon Meacham traces Lincoln’s moral and political development and how that links to present day America. Through Lincoln’s story, Jon illustrates the ways and means of politics in a democracy, the roots and durability of racism, and the capacity of conscience to shape events.
The Soul of America
In this nonpartisan, anecdotally rich presentation, Meacham describes previous moments of crisis and partisan deadlock in American history and suggests how previous generations — and we, in our own time — transcended hours of fear by heeding what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” Examples range from Reconstruction and President Grant to woman’s suffrage and President Wilson to the crisis of the 1930s and FDR and the passage of civil rights legislation under LBJ.
