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 October 12, 2022

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 November 12, 2020

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 November 7, 2019

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 August 15, 2019

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 March 28, 2019

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 December 1, 2018

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 November 1, 2018

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 August 23, 2018

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

A chance to reshape American life

By Jon Meacham July 26, 2018

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 January 18, 2018
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