Jon Meacham is a much lauded and widely renowned historian with a concentration on American historical subjects who is also a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University.
He is revered for his insightful presidential biographies . Meacham was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling book on Andrew Jackson’s presidency, American Lion in 2009. His 2015 book His Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush was a #1 New York Times bestseller.
Meacham’s other New York Times best sellers include: The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, published in 2018, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power published 2012, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, published 2003, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation published 2006, and most recently His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope; and The Hope of Glory, published in 2020.
Originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, he began his journalistic career at The Chattanooga Times, and was the editor of The Washington Monthly before moving to Newsweek in 1995. After serving as Managing Editor of that magazine for eight years, Meacham was Editor-in-Chief from 2006 to 2010. He is a former Executive Editor at Random House, where he published the letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and books of many highly regarded authors including Al Gore, John Danforth, Clara Bingham, Mary Soames, and Charles Peters.
Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University, presents the 2009 Biography prize to Meacham.
He is a contributing writer to the New York Times Book Review and a contributing editor of Time. He has written for such varied periodicals as the New York Times op-ed page, the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and Garden & Gun. In addition to his written work, Meacham is also a regular guest on “Morning Joe'' and other broadcasts for his sought after commentary on history, politics, and religion in America.
Meacham is a fellow of the Society of American Historians and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a trustee of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, The McCallie School, and The Harpeth Hall School. Meacham chairs the National Advisory Council of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University. He has served on the vestries of St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue and of Trinity Church Wall Street as well as the Board of Regents of The University of the South.
The Anti-Defamation League awarded Meacham its Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Prize. In 2013 the Historical Society of Pennsylvania presented him with its Founder’s Award; in 2016 he was honored with the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute’s Spirit of Democracy Award. Meacham also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University in 2005 and holds honorary doctorates from Middlebury College, Wake Forest University, the University of Tennessee, Dickinson College, Sewanee, and several other institutions.
A summa cum laude graduate of the University of the South, he lives in Nashville and in Sewanee with his wife and children.
Meacham spoke about The Role of Religion in the 2008 Campaign at The Common Good alongside Amy Sullivan and Steven Waldman, and at The Common Good American Spirit Awards and Forum 2021 where he received The Common Good American Spirit Award for Thought Leadership in 2021.
He is currently a member of The Common Good Honorary Advisory Board.
Selected Media:
Meacham’s Podcasts: “Hope Through History”, a documentary style podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hope-through-history/id1507276251, “It Was Said”, which analyzes important speeches of the past: https://www.history.com/it-was-said-podcast
Alex Henderson, ‘Jon Meacham: How the Founding Fathers anticipated Donald Trump’, Salon, 5 July 2019
‘“Songs of America”: Tim McGraw & Jon Meacham trace history through music’, MSNBC, 16 June 2019
Twitter: @jmeacham
