Jon Meacham

Jon Meacham (born 1969 in Chattanooga, Tennessee) is the editor of Newsweek, a Pulitzer Prize winning bestselling author and a commentator on politics, history, and religious faith in America.

Biography

Born in Chattanooga, 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 Rev. 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.

He and his wife, a Mississippi native, University of Virginia and Columbia University Teachers College graduate, and the former Executive Director of the Harlem Day Charter School, live in New York City with their three young children.

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.

In 2009, he wrote a controversial article entitled The End of Christian America about the decline of the role of religion in American society, in both the public sphere and in private affiliation. ^[2]

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's newest biography, American Lion is about Andrew Jackson and his confrontational approach with the White House circle he was associated with. It was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

Commentator

Meacham is co-moderator with Sally Quinn of On Faith, a conversation on religion offered by Newsweek and The Washington Post.^[3] 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.

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.

References

External links

Books by Jon Meacham

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (2008) ISBN 978-1400063253
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (2006) ISBN 978-0812976663
Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (2004) ISBN 978-0812972825
Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement (2003) ISBN 978-0375758812

Articles by Jon Meacham

Reviews of American Gospel

Reviews of Franklin and Winston

[1] [1]

[2] The End of Christian America

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