Jon Meacham

Jon Ellis Meacham (/ˈmiːtʃəm/; born May 20, 1969) is executive editor and executive vice president at Random House. 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 American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.

Meacham also wrote Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (2012), which appeared on many publications' year-end lists of the best nonfiction.

Life and career

Jon Ellis Meacham was born on May 20, 1969 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the son of Jere Ellis Meacham and Linda McBrayer Meacham, an executive. 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. He graduated summa cum laude in 1991 with a degree in English Literature, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Meacham was an only child and spent his high school years living with his grandfather, Judge Ellis K. Meacham. The author of three Napoleonic-era maritime novels about the Bombay Marine of the East India Company, Judge Meacham gave Meacham his interest in history, literature, and politics.