Jon Meacham

Jon Meacham
Jon Meacham, 2014
Born	Jon Ellis Meacham (1969-05-20) May 20, 1969 Chattanooga, Tennessee, US
Occupation	Writer, journalist, editor
Nationality	American
Education	BA
Alma mater	The University of the South
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize
Years active	1995–present
Spouse	Margaret Keith Smythe Meacham
Children	3
Website
www.jonmeacham.com

Jon Ellis Meacham (/ˈmiːtʃəm/; born May 20, 1969) is executive editor and executive vice president at Random House.^[1] He is a former editor-in-chief of Newsweek, a contributing editor to Time magazine, editor-at-large of WNET, and a commentator on politics, history, and religious faith in America. He won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.

Meacham also wrote Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (2012), which appeared on many publications' year-end lists of the best nonfiction.

Early life

Jon Ellis Meacham was born on May 20, 1969 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the son of Jere Ellis Meacham and Linda McBrayer Meacham, an executive.^[2][3] He attended St. Nicholas School, the McCallie School and the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he was an initiate of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity.^[4] He graduated summa cum laude in 1991 with a degree in English Literature, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.^[5]

Career

Meacham joined Newsweek as a writer in January 1995, became national affairs editor in June of that year, and was named managing editor in November 1998. In September 2006, he was promoted to editor-in-chief. In August 2010 Meacham announced that he would depart Newsweek upon completion of the sale of the magazine by the Washington Post Company.^[6][7][8] He has also written essays and reviews for The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times Book Review.

Meacham speaking in 2016

His presidential biography of Andrew Jackson won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.^[9] His 2015 biography of George H. W. Bush received mixed reviews: some praised its "historical rehabilitation of its subject",^[10] while others criticized it for being insufficiently hard-nosed in its depiction of its subject.^[11]

Television

From May 2010 to April 2011, Meacham was co-host with Alison Stewart of Need to Know on PBS.^[12] He is also a frequent guest on MSNBC's Morning Joe ^[13][14] and has appeared multiple times on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher.^[15][16][17]

Awards

The Anti-Defamation League awarded Meacham the Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Prize. He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University in 2005 and holds five other honorary doctorates.^[11]

Personal life

Meacham and his wife, Margaret Keith Smythe Meacham, a native of Mississippi, former executive director of the Harlem Day Charter School, and a former programs officer with the Fund for Public Schools in New York, live in Nashville, Tennessee,^[18] with their three children. Meacham is a communicant of Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue, where he has served on the Vestry of the 180-year-old Episcopal parish.^[19]

Books

• 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. ^{[upper-alpha 1]}
• 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. 

References

Notes

Citations

External links

• Official website
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Interview about Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, Booknotes, February 15, 2004
• Meacham discusses Franklin & Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library
• Jon Meacham at Library of Congress Authorities, with 7 catalog records