Jon Meacham

Jon Meacham
Jon Meacham at the 2014 Texas Book Festival.
Born	Jon Ellis Meacham (1969-05-20) May 20, 1969 Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
Occupation	Writer, Journalist, editor
Nationality	American
Spouse	Margaret Keith Smythe Meacham (three children)
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 his work American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.

Personal life

Meacham was born 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 in English Literature,^[5] was the class salutatorian and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.^[6]

An only child, Meacham spent his high school years living with his grandfather, Judge Ellis K. Meacham. A legendary figure in Chattanooga and author of three Napoleonic-era maritime novels about the Bombay Marine of the East India Company, Judge Meacham is credited with giving Meacham his interest in history, literature, and politics.

He 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 New York City and Sewanee, Tennessee, with their three children. Meacham is a communicant of St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, where he has served on the vestry of the 180-year-old Episcopal parish.

Career

Journalism

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.^[7][8][9] 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.

Television news

From May 2010 to April 2011, Meacham was co-host with Allison Stewart of Need to Know on PBS.^[10]

Random House

Meacham has edited books by Al Gore, Clara Bingham, Charles Peters, Mary Soames, Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough, and others. He supervises the publication of the letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr..

His presidential biography of Andrew Jackson won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.^[11]

Affiliations

Meacham is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a former trustee and member of the Board of Regents of University of the South, a Fellow of the Society of American Historians, a member of the Vestry of Trinity Wall Street, a trustee of the Churchill Centre, and a member of the Advisory Board of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. 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.

Books

• Editor, Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement. 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. , winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography^[11]
• Editor, American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic The Civil War: A Narrative. New York: Random House. 2011. 
• Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. New York: Random House. 2012. ISBN 978-1-4000-6766-4. 

References

External links

• Official website
• 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