Jon Meacham

Meacham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and professor at Vanderbilt University, is the author of the new book And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle

Recent Articles

Lincoln Saved American Democracy. We Can Too

The great President’s example can teach us what it takes to stand up for justice.

By Jon Meacham

America's Crises Would Be Daunting for Any President-Elect

Division is, in fact, more the rule than the exception in American life, writes @jmeacham

By Jon Meacham

How Impeachment Shows Who We Are as Americans

The possible impeachment of Donald Trump is about more than one man. It is a singular moment in American democracy that will try our capacity for reason over passion, fact over faith and principle over tribe

By Jon Meacham

Country Music Should Be Political. After All, It Always Has Been

The distinctive American music has always reflected the complicated lives of the people who make it

By Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw

Mueller Offers a Lesson in the Power of Reason Over Passion

Almost a century ago, in the aftermath of the First World War, the journalist Walter Lippmann, then 32 years old, published an influential and disturbing critique of democracy and its future. The mood in the...

By Jon Meacham

George H.W. Bush Believed in the Essential Goodness of Americans

It was Bush who quietly but unmistakably laid the foundations for the 21st century

By Jon Meacham

A Leader Should Appeal to Their People’s Best Instincts. Donald Trump Appeals to the Worst

George Washington understood the stakes. "As the first of everything," Washington wrote, whatever he did, substantially as well as stylistically, would "serve to establish a precedent." In 1790, the first full year of Washington's presidency,...

By Jon Meacham

What President Trump Reveals in His Allusions to Nixon and McCarthy

The Evening ended badly. on Dec. 13, 1950, the Washington columnist Drew Pearson was being feted at a birthday dinner at the Sulgrave Club near Dupont Circle. A vocal opponent of Senator Joseph McCarthy, Pearson...

By Jon Meacham

The South Could Mend America’s Divide—If It Reckons With Its Past

A chance to reshape American life

By Jon Meacham

50 Years After 1968, We Are Still Living In Its Shadow

No one in the loop--including, almost surely, the man himself--was sure he would really do it. On March 31, 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson was scheduled to address the nation about the Vietnam War at 9...

By Jon Meacham

Could the 25th Amendment Be Trump's Downfall? Here's How It Works

The 25th Amendment, a constitutional primer

By Jon Meacham

My Father's Vietnam

The casualties of a lost war didn't end with the fighting

By Jon Meacham

The Naughty Nineties Set the Stage for Our Reality-TV Presidency

One of the great historical questions is also one of the most difficult to answer: When, precisely, did a given phenomenon, cultural or political, truly begin? Should we date Christianity's durability to the time of...

By Jon Meacham

American Hate, a History

The message was clear. The fate of America — or at least of white America, which was the only America that counted — was at stake. On the autumn evening of Thursday, Oct. 7, 1948,...

By Jon Meacham

Elvis In the Heart of America

What the rise, fall and rebirth of an icon tells us about who we were--and who we are now, 40 years after his death

By Jon Meacham

What Does Trump See When He Looks Back In History? Mostly He Sees ... Trump

It was Vintage Ronald Reagan. Addressing a fundraiser for the JFK Library in 1985, the 40th President mused about the mystery and magic of the White House. "Nothing is ever lost in that great house;...

By Jon Meacham

Our Historical Ambivalence About Immigrants Is a Great American Paradox

Passions were high, and the president of the United States was eager to act. In 1798, John Adams, amid talk of war with France, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts to, in his view, protect...

By Jon Meacham

Do Business Leaders Make Good Presidents?

Do the lessons of business apply to government?

By Jon Meacham

George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole Unite for Pearl Harbor at 75

They are old men now, living emblems of American ages past. Long rivals, once allies, and now friends, George Herbert Walker Bush and Robert Dole are in the twilight of a pair of remarkable lives,...

By Jon Meacham

Andrew Jackson’s Lessons for Donald Trump

"With Donald Trump’s rise to power as America’s 45th President, those in search of an illuminating analogy have frequently cited the example of the seventh"

By Jon Meacham
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