Jon Meacham

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Jon Meacham on CNBC, June 30, 2007.
Jon Meacham on CNBC, June 30, 2007.

Jon Meacham (born 1969) is the editor of Newsweek magazine, a bestselling author, and a commentator on politics, history, and faith in America.

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[edit] Biography

Born in Chattanooga in 1969, Meacham attended elementary school at Saint Nicholas School, moving on to the McCallie School and the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, graduating summa cum laude in English Literature; he was salutatorian and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He served as editor of the Sewanee Purple newspaper and was a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, the Wellingtons drinking club and the exclusive Red Ribbon Society. He studied religion under the revered professor Herbert S. Wentz.

An only child, Meacham's parents divorced when he was young and he spent his middle and high school years living with his grandfather, Judge Ellis K. Meacham. A legendary figure in Chattanooga and a renowned author, the Judge is credited with giving Meacham his interest in history and the greatest generation.

He and his wife, Keith, a Mississippi native and University of Virginia graduate who is the development director for Harlem Charter School, live in New York City with their two young children.

[edit] Newsweek Magazine

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 at age 29. In September 2006, he was promoted to the position of Editor, replacing Mark Whitaker; Daniel Klaidman assumed Meacham's previous position of managing editor [1]. He supervises the magazine's coverage of politics, international affairs, and breaking news, and has written cover stories on politics, religion, race, guns in America, and the death of Ronald Reagan. In 2001, Newsweek won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence—the industry's highest honor—for its coverage of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath. In 2003, the magazine won the award again for its coverage of President Bush and the Iraq War. Meacham began his journalistic career at the Chattanooga Times.

[edit] Author

A New York Times bestselling author, Meacham is the author of Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, a chronicle of the wartime relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill, and American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, a historical portrait of the spiritual foundation of America.

He edited Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement, a collection of distinguished nonfiction about the mid-century struggle against Jim Crow. Meacham is currently working on a biography of Andrew Jackson and his White House circle.

[edit] Commentator

Meacham is co-moderator with Sally Quinn of On Faith, a conversation on religion offered by Newsweek and The Washington Post [2]. He is a leading commentator on the role of faith in America, appearing on NBC's Meet the Press and the Washington Post Op-Ed page among other venues. Meacham also frequently appears on MSNBC, NBC News, and Imus in the Morning as a political analyst.

[edit] Affiliations

A contributing editor of The Washington Monthly, Meacham is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a communicant of St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, where he serves on the Vestry of the 180 year-old Episcopal parish. He is also a member of the Board of Regents of University of the South, the Vestry of Trinity Church Wall Street, the Leadership Council of the Harvard Divinity School, and the National Advisory Group of Washington National Cathedral. He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University in 2005 and another from Loyola College in Maryland in 2007.

[edit] External links

[edit] Articles by Jon Meacham

[edit] Reviews of American Gospel

[edit] Reviews of Franklin and Winston