Henry Raymond, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, came to the White House in August to urge Lincoln to change his stance to improve his odds of reelection. (name): Is jon meacham having any relationship affair ?. ". He has explored Americas leaders in such services as Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power and his biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. "Lincoln was a politician, but he was a politician who ultimately was driven by conscience," Meacham says. Meacham's book is good for what it is an introduction to one decade in Lewis' remarkable life. In his biography of Jefferson, Jon identifies qualities that would be helpful in the new political arena, Jefferson repeatedly reached out to his enemies and showed ideological flexibility. According to the former presidents stance on slavery, Jon states, Slavery was the rare subject where Jeffersons sense of realism kept him from marshaling his sense of hope in the service of the cause of reform.. Published: Nov. 02, 2021, 6:45 a.m. I was right that things had not been as touch and go since the 1850s, which the events of Jan. 6 clearly prove., But writing about the battle to preserve the possibilities of the American experience, as he put it, did leave Meacham with a sense of hope for the people of our fallen, frail and fallible country. Bush barely talked about the fall of the Berlin Wall and refused to fly to Berlin. He is also a contributing writer to The New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor to Time magazine, as well as a former editor-in-chief of Newsweek. Mainly because its easier to take on a certain set of facts and a certain view and stick with it., The greatest leaders have changed their minds: Lincoln about emancipation, FDR about intervention, JFK about nuclear war, and Reagan about the Soviet Union. Journalist Born in Tennessee #2. He is a contributing writer toThe New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor ofTime, and has written forThe New York Timesop-ed page,The Washington Post,Vanity Fair, andGarden & Gun. Abraham Lincoln signed the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. There is no single bit of rumors and controversy concerning his professional as well as personal life. When his mother cooked one of the chickens, the boy refused to eat ithis first act, he wryly recalled, of nonviolent protest. A new biography by historian Jon Meacham examines the oft-discussed life and legacy of former President Abraham Lincoln through a very specific lens. "When I was growing up there was a song that people would sing in the church: I'm so glad trouble don't last always, O my Lord, O my Lord," Lewis writes in the book's afterword. Lincolns shadow hovered over Meachams childhood, long before he became a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer. After serving as Managing Editor ofNewsweekfor eight years, Meacham was the Editor of the magazine from 2006 to 2010. How did the United States arrive at the present moment? 2022 White PaPer. [6] His book, Franklin and Winston, Partners of an Intimate Relationship about Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, was released in 2003. White America, Meacham notes, found Black Power deeply threatening, even though White Power had been acceptable since Jamestown. Troubled by internal division and F.B.I. ", And in the body of the book, he presents ample evidence to bolster his claim. Jon was the editor for Voices in Our Blood: Americas Best on the Civil Rights Movement that was released in 2001. And that's why I think it's so important to follow that Lincoln example of a humble recognition that no human being has a monopoly on truth, but that there is a moral intuition, there is a conscience and you want to do everything you can to be in accord with this universal law of treating others as you would be treated. [6] He then went on to attend Sewanee: The University of the South where he graduated salutatorian and summa cum laude in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. [3] They have three children. Destiny and Powerwas also honored for excellence in Politics and Leadership in 2015 by the Plutarch Committee of BIO, the Biographers International Organization. He also appeared in a cameo in the 2018 film The Front Runner. Unfortunately, apart from a brief afterword by Lewis himself, His Truth Is Marching On ends in 1968 with Kennedys assassination. In 1716, Hannah Lincoln gave birth to John Lincoln, who continued the family's migration south and west when he and his wife, Rebecca Flowers Lincoln, settled on a large farm on Linville Creek in the Shenandoah Valley in 1766. In fact, his party had done badly in the midterm elections, and he had even written a private note forecasting his own defeat. Jon Meacham Fans Also Viewed . His Truth Is Marching On effectively ends in 1968, though in an epilogue, Meacham gives a summary of the remainder of Lewis' life, including his political career, his National Book Award win in 2016, and his reaction to Trump's election (he was "horrified," Meacham writes). He issued the formal Emancipation Proclamation the following January. He lives in Nashville with his wife and children. As far as Im concerned, Lewis later wrote, this all but forgotten episode was the turning point of the civil rights movement. It convinced many Black members of SNCC that they could not trust white allies and needed to make decisions for themselves. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 2016: The Sandra Day OConnor Institute's Spirit of Democracy Award. Born in 1940, Lewis was one of 10 children of parents who owned a farm in Jim Crow Alabama, a world where lynchings . In a swampy moment, Meacham appeared on MSNBC following the speech. Hulton Archive/Getty Images The book starts off with a brief look at Lewis' childhood in Pike County, Ala. His parents didn't share his activism: "Theirs was, as the Bible says, a straight and narrow way," Meacham quotes Lewis as saying. And it also has the virtue of being a durable political vision. On how people mixed religion and politics then: The religious imagery and points of reference suffused the American experience then in a way that was so striking that in the second inaugural [address] one of the great pieces of writing ever in the history of the English language, what does Lincoln say? He has been a frequent guest on different talk shows like Charlie Rose, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, and Real Time with Bill Maher. hide caption, His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham. harassment, SNCC did not long outlive the 1960s. Leaders are far more often mirrors of who we are rather than makers of who we are, and thats an uncomfortable reality.. Anyone who doubts the relevance of history to our own time has only to read this exceptional book. Jon Meacham speaks in a re-created church at Jamestown Settlement in James City County, Va., in 2019. Distinguished visiting professor of history at, This page was last edited on 25 January 2023, at 08:58. Later on, Jon then went on to attend Sewanee: The University of the South where Jon graduated salutatorian and summa cum laude in 1991 earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in both English literature and was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Being empathetic to one another involves a certain amount of republican self-interest. In the 1960s, for the first time in United States history, young people stood at the cutting edge of American radicalism. By 1965, with new laws prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations and voting, the legal foundations of Jim Crow had been destroyed. Yes, it is. Among Lewis' admirers is Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and journalist. He is also a frequent guest on CBS This Morning, Face the Nation, MSNBC's Morning Joe, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.[17][18]. Jon's actual body measurements haven't disclosed however her looks ideal in his current body figure. Jons paternal grandparents are, Ellis K. Meacham and Jean Austin Meacham, who raised him after his parents divorce. From the creators of the 2021 Webby Award-Winning Best Podcast Series, It Was Said, and Hope Through History, C13Originals and the Pulitzer-Prize Winning Best-Selling Author, Jon Meacham, join together again for a brand new series that will guide listeners through critical moments in our history. He was born to father Jere Ellis Meacham and mother Linda McBrayer Meacham. He said, Just enough of us will do the right thing just enough of the time and, as cataclysmic as the Civil War was, just enough of us did the right thing just long enough. Meacham went on, The remarkable thing about the American story is that, however slowly, however painfully, however tragically, however bloodily, we have advanced toward fulfilling the promise of the Declaration., Elisabeth Egan is an editor at the Book Review and the author of A Window Opens., Jon Meacham Grew Up With Civil War Bullets in His Backyard, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/books/review/and-there-was-light-jon-meacham.html. But I'm fundamentally hopeful in this sense: We have stared into the abyss before, and just enough of us have decided to do the right thing. In his latest book, And There Was Light, Jon Meacham explores the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln couldn't have known that summer that he or the Union would emerge victorious, as Meacham tells Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep. In the Hands of the People. That doesn't mean that's going to happen again. In him we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. He studied at The McCallie School, where Jon developed an interest in the civil rights movement. Even as the movement achieved its greatest triumphs, however, it faced a crisis as urban uprisings, beginning in Harlem in 1964, drew attention to the economic inequality civil rights legislation could not cure. Accessibility information. So religion was both a rallying cry it provided a predicate for the north, for the anti-slavery forces and let us be very clear, and this is resonant today: It also provided an intellectual prop to slave owners who wanted to believe that slavery was divinely ordained. The following year found him in the Mississippi Delta taking part in Freedom Summer. Meacham was also honored with the 2015 Nashville Public Library Literary Award; other winners include John Lewis, Robert K. Massie, Margaret Atwood, John McPhee, Billy Collins, Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Irving, Ann Patchett, John Updike, David McCullough, and David Halberstam. Random House US President. Eventually, he would be elected to the House of Representatives from Atlanta, serving in Congress for more than three decades. The two have three children. Opinion: Should Republicans Still Call Themselves The Party Of Lincoln? If we are curious about how previous eras got it right and got it wrong, I think we raise the chances of getting it right. Ultimately, we would get the 13th Amendment a few months later, but he was willing to go down politically for that principle. [3][6] At the time of their marriage, she was a teacher, having studied at University of Virginia and the University of Provence. Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Destiny and Power, American Lion, and Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. [4], Meacham has explored America's leaders in such works as Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power as well as his biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. In addition, Jon also holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Endowed Chair in American Presidency at Vanderbilt University. But once again, America has bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice, said Biden. Jon is a 53-year-old who was born on May 20, 1969, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the United States. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of books on Americas soul, Andrew Jackson, George H.W. He received an invitation to Ronald Reagan's 1981 inauguration in Washington, D.C., in response to a letter that he sent to the president-elect. In 1964, the Democratic National Convention refused to replace Mississippis official all-white delegation with the interracial one chosen by the states Freedom Democratic Party. Last Name Meacham #3. Its no surprise that Meacham cited Bidens invocation of that theme: He used it in his own speech back on Aug. 20, when he endorsed the Biden-Harris team during the virtual Democratic National Convention. The road to totalitarianism lies in unquestioning certitude. Meacham identified three key characteristics of the American Revolution: curiosity, humility and empathy. He participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides in which activists sought to fight segregation on buses and their terminals. And that may sound simplistic, but I firmly believe and I argue this, that that was Lincoln's moral vision. And as Lincoln said about our better angels, those better angels won't prevail unless we enlist ourselves in the cause, too. So, having delved into the legacies of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and George H.W. Those folks are known as journalists. Tonight marks the entire election results mark a renewal of an American conversation where were struggling imperfectly to realize the full implications of the Jeffersonian promise of equality, said Meacham. Taurus. Welcome to Reflections of History. In his biography of Jefferson, Meacham identifies qualities that would be helpful in the current political arena, "Jefferson repeatedly reached out to his enemies and showed ideological flexibility." Jon was the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize due to Biography or Autobiography for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. Jon is a popular American writer, reviewer, historian, and presidential biographer who is working as the current Canon Historian of the Washington National Cathedral. How are viewers to keep up with shifting titles? A trustee of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the Smithsonians National Museum of American History, The McCallie School, and The Harpeth Hall School, Meacham chairs the National Advisory Council of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University. [36][37], Meacham has been strongly critical of President, Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle, "Jon Meacham (C'91) returns to Sewanee as a history professor", "Journalist is topic for 21st Century Club", "Robert Remini, Exhaustive Andrew Jackson Biographer, Dies at 91", "University of the South marks 150 years", "Jon Meacham Becomes Time Contributing Editor", "Why Trump Is More Father Coughlin Than Franklin Roosevelt", "The 2009 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Biography", "Jon Meacham, Bush's Biographer, Will Also Deliver a Eulogy", "Joe: Donald Trump's hostile takeover of the Republican Party", "Meacham: Bush knew exactly what he was saying", "Haslam joining Vanderbilt faculty for leadership course", "Historian Goodwin Says Look to Past Presidents for Easing Current Political Divide", "Historian Jon Meacham Speaks On Final Night Of Democratic Convention", "The historian Jon Meacham, who wrote of 'the soul of America,' has been working on Biden's speeches", "Nancy Pelosi says she will not seek re-election as Democratic leader in House as it happened", "Dickinson College sends graduates into the world", "Sewanee announces honorary degree recipients", "Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham to address Loyola's centennial class", "Jon Meacham to Give Middlebury College Commencement Address", "Board of Trustees Approves Honorary Degree for Pulitzer Prize Writer Meacham", "Pulitzer Winner, Congresswoman to Address Class of 2018", "Millsaps announces honorary degree recipients: Jon Meacham, Jesmyn Ward, Dr. Lamar Weems", "House Tour: Is This The Chicest Home In Nashville? Jon Meacham on Obama and Faith News Meacham has also been awarded honorary doctorates from several universities: As of 2014[update], Meacham resides in Belle Meade, Tennessee. President Biden will deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. He calls Lewis as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first-century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, as well as Samuel Adams, were to the initial creation of the Republic itself in the eighteenth century. As a believer in the injunction that one should love ones neighbor as oneself, Lewis was arguably a saint in our time, risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful. As a student at the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Tennessee, he tried to organize a chapter of the NAACP but was rebuffed by the school's administration. Therefore, Jon earns his salary as a writer, reviewer, historian, and presidential biographer. He could have chosen not to fortify and fight over Fort Sumter. on the Business environment in China. READ MORE , His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope with an afterword by John Lewis, An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the presentfrom the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Soul of America, John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma, Alabama, and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is a visionary and a man of faith. ). Of course its not surprising that a guy like Gingrich would support Republican politicians and criticize Democrats. Vanderbilt University is committed to principles of equal opportunity and affirmative action. We get no sense of how Lewis made the transition from protest to elective politics, or what he accomplished in the House. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) MSNBC announced on Monday . For a full account of Lewiss life, we must await the biography being written by the Rutgers historian David Greenberg, to which Meacham graciously directs readers. "Well, guess what that meant: If the Confederacy came back, it would all be set and settled and slavery likely would have endured again. Meacham tells the story of Lewis' involvement in the civil rights movement in His Truth Is Marching On, published just weeks after the congressman's death. Jon Ellis Meacham (/mitm/; born May 20, 1969) is an American writer, reviewer, historian and presidential biographer who is serving as the current Canon Historian of the Washington National Cathedral since November 7, 2021. When civil rights activist and U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia died last month, so did a big piece of America. The presidents we remember warmly surprised us. James Lawson, who led workshops in Nashville on the teachings of Gandhi, and Diane Nash, a student leader and key organizer of the sit-ins and Freedom Rides. "[9], Selected by the Bush family to be the official biographer for George H. W. Bush, Meacham's book, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, was published in 2015. Its taken us too long, our work has been bloody and tragic and painful and difficult and, Lord knows, it is unfinished, but at our best we try.. A new biography by historian Jon Meacham examines the oft-discussed life and legacy of former President Abraham Lincoln through a very specific lens. In this illuminating book, a project of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, the #1 New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham presents selections from Jeffersons writing on the subject, with an afterword by Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Annette Gordon-Reed and comments on Jeffersons ideas from others, including Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Frederick Douglass, Carl Sagan, and American presidents. The presidential biographer was raised on a battlefield, so when he was dispirited by the state of the union, it made sense to look to Lincoln. Lincoln was under tremendous pressure to withdraw emancipation as a precondition for peace talks with the Confederacy. His latest book, His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, an intimate portrait of the civil rights icon and longtime Georgia congressman, is available wherever books are sold. The following year saw the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery and, months later, Lincoln's assassination. -The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels May 8, 2018 Named a "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the. If we cant change and evolve as citizens and leaders, then we are undoing the American Revolution. Meacham also credited Biden for a moment in his speech when he cited all the firsts in Kamala Harriss ascent first woman, African American woman and South Asian woman to be elected vice president. Privacy Policy. And There Was Light brilliantly interweaves the best of gripping narrative history with a deeper search for the complex interplay among morality, politics, and power in a life, in a democracy, and in an America ripped apart over slavery. This article is adapted from his presentation. At the March on Washington, the organizers persuaded Lewis to remove incendiary language from his prepared remarks, including a reference to marching through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did (though he planned to add nonviolently). He is also apresidential biographer as well as former executive editor and vice president at the publisher house. A politician is up for reelection, holding firm to their moral convictions however politically unpopular in the pursuit of preserving an endangered democracy. -Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship Oct 14, 2003 His Truth Is Marching On. Trending. For Jon Meacham, as for believers worldwide, the events of Good Friday and Easter reveal essential truths about Christianity. He was asked to speak at the 2020 Democratic National Convention on the Soul of America. At once familiar and elusive, Lincoln tends to be seen as the greatest of American presidentsa remote iconor as a politician driven more by calculation than by conviction. Bending that arc requires all of us, it requires we the people and it requires a president of the United States with empathy, grace, a big heart and an open mind. We have to listen and admit occasionally that the other side has a pointthat is America at its best., The third quality is empathy, which includes both acts of mercy and of self-interest. And fortunately, it was rewarded by events. Its genius was to change and evolve. begins to fall apart without an empathetic understanding of each other. Meacham described how President George H.W. To overcome these forces, Meacham says, we must recover the true original intent of Americas founders. Much of it relies on Lewiss 1998 memoir, Walking With the Wind. The emphasis on the spiritual origins of Lewiss commitment to social change leads to slighting the movements more secular catalysts, including the destabilization of the racial system during World War II and the rise of independent nations in Africa. Meacham tells this story with his customary eloquence. Likewise, as by the sources, his monthly earning is around$56,666.67 and after the estimation, per week he earns around$13,076.92. At the age of four, Lewis, ambitious to become a minister, practiced by preaching to his familys chickens. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and son of an Alabama tenant farmer was inspired by the Bible and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., to put his life on the line in the service of what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. From an early age, Lewis learned that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality. During a race for Congress in 1986, he unfairly denigrated his opponent, the civil rights veteran Julian Bond, for having done nothing more than put out news releases while I was on the front lines.. Sound familiar? Follow Jon Meacham. ( married,single, in relation or divorce): How many children does jon meacham have ? Besides, he was a writer at The New York Times. If he had solely been a cynical political creature, he would have made radically different decisions at critical points.". Meacham, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson, has turned his attention to Lincoln in a new book. Days after the speech, Meacham appeared on the afternoon show Deadline: White House. Host Nicolle Wallace played a clip from the historians speech and said, That was Jon Meacham during last weeks Democratic National Convention making the case for Joe Biden. Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Destiny and Power, American Lion, and Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. Born in Chattanooga in 1969, Meacham was educated at St. Nicholas School, The McCallie School, and graduated from The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, with a degreesumma cum laudein English Literature; he was salutatorian and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In several ways, Jon brought a still-evolving nation closer to realizing its ideals, and his story provides inspiration and illumination for Americans now who are serving for both social and political change. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Jon Meacham approaches Lincoln through his education and evolution as a thinker, setting those experiences in parallel with the practical work of politics, grounded by the reality that Lincoln, like all of us, was an imperfect human being. The policy: If a Crossfire co-host has made a financial contribution to a politician who appears on the program or is the focus of the program, disclosure is not required during the show since the co-hosts political support is obvious by his or her point of view expressed on the program.. Lewis loved church from an early age and practiced preaching to an audience of chickens. "He was under immense political pressure to say, 'We'll settle all that in due course,'" Meacham explains. In the introduction to the book, Meacham makes the argument that Lewis wasn't just saintly but, in fact, a saint. 2023 Jon Meacham. It requires this, this interesting balance. Hell now have to join those panels as an unpaid guest of the network. And Lincoln said no, that he had made his position clear. Perhaps inevitably, Lewiss conduct was less saintly once he became a politician. Newt Gingrich, working in 2013 as a polemical combatant on the reboot of Crossfire, was involved in a PAC that donated to a Republican senator who had been a guest on the show. NPR's Scott Simon talks with historian Jon Meacham about his new . In 1965 he suffered a fractured skull at the hands of the Alabama state police, who violently dispersed voting rights marchers at Selma in an event soon memorialized as Bloody Sunday. To answer this question, Jon Meacham quoted two statistics: Only 17 percent of Americans trust the government (down from 77 percent in 1955), and average household income is $58,000, some $70,000 less than what a family of four needs for a middle-class life. It was real.. Stories that brim with optimism. Woodrow Wilson said the Constitution was supposed to be Newtonian, but was in fact Darwinian. Jon appeared in Ken Burns documentary series The Roosevelts: An Intimate History on PBS in 2014. What recent history tells us about the state of politics, Is America a democracy or a republic? Because the constitutional order has not been in as perilous a state since Lincoln himself became president, he explained. He holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Endowed Chair in American Presidency at Vanderbilt University. Eisenhower told him to make important decisions with all his advisers in the room. The Washington National Cathedral announced on March 10, 2021, that they had chosen Jon Meacham as its first canon historian, a role that is part of a cathedral initiative that will turn part of a long-empty building into the new College of both Faith and Culture. For example, Lincoln could have decided not to vocally oppose a compromise in the winter of 1860 that would have preserved slavery, arguably for decades, Meacham says. Jon Meacham, co-chair of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, and Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Chair in American Presidency, is a renowned presidential historian, contributing writer to The New York Times Book Review, contributing editor at TIME, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Produced by Rachael Burrow. The recent death of John Lewis, the most prominent surviving leader of the civil rights movement, produced an outpouring of adulation, from a funeral addressed by three former presidents to a prime-time mash-up of history and entertainment hosted by Oprah Winfrey. Yet its everywhere on cable news. The Hope of Glory. The book starts off with a brief look at Lewis' childhood in Pike County, Ala. His parents didn't share his activism: "Theirs was, as the Bible says, a straight and narrow way," Meacham quotes. He was born to fatherJere Ellis Meacham and mother Linda McBrayer Meacham. who had it sewn into the rug in the Oval Office, involved in a PAC that donated to a Republican senator who had been a guest on the show, gave an interview to Anderson Cooper in that latter capacity, to rival the corruption of the Fox News-White House relationship. Jon happily married his lovely wife Margaret Keith Smythe, called Keith, in 1996. The Honorary degree recipient, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Presidential Historian Jon Meacham gave the Commencement Address at the Springfield College . As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month.