Jon Meacham

Jon Meacham
Jon Ellis Meachamis 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEditor
Date of Birth20 May 1969
CountryUnited States of America
military war book
Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history, for instance, because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books.
war america government
The fact is that America has been at her most prosperous when government and the private sector have been not at war, but in a wary, if often underplayed, alliance. History is unmistakable on this point.
war president world
Here is a pretty good rule of thumb for Democratic Presidents: if it didn't work for Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won four terms and a World War, it probably won't work for you either.
determination war circles
In the closed circle of the war cabinet, pounded by terrible report after terrible report, there had been uncertainty about whether he could fend off the drift to exploring a deal with Hitler. The determination of the larger group trumped the tentativeness of the smaller, and Churchill fulfilled his role as leader by disentangling himself from defeatism--one of his singular achievements at the end of May 1940.
warrior political tough
Barack Obama is many things; among them, he is a tough and even ferocious political warrior.
war men world
World War II ended the Great Depression with one of the great public-private industrial collaborations in the history of man.
activists convinced history humility monopoly move themselves
Too many activists have convinced themselves that they have a monopoly on truth. A little humility and a sense of history could move us all forward.
comforting great private public sector wonderful
It would be wonderful if the public sector were always great, or always terrible; or if the private sector were always great, or always terrible. Alas, reality is more complicated than comforting caricatures. Governments fail, and corporations fail.
attacks birthplace desperate religion sell tend
Attacks on a politician's identity - questioning Romney's religion, say, or Obama's birthplace - tend to come when an opponent is desperate and can't sell himself.
address best cultural deliver economic measured middle nation perhaps profound rises speak state whoever
Whoever rises to deliver the inaugural Address of 2013 will speak to a nation in which the American Dream is under profound economic and cultural pressure. This is perhaps best measured by the state of the middle class.
faction human intrinsic next
We are now living in a post-Roosevelt, post-Reagan universe. What comes next will not be post-partisan, because faction is an intrinsic human impulse.
fight sounds
But they had a fight about it. That sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?
allow capacity factor lies life power religious system
The power of the American system of republicanism lies in its capacity to allow religious belief to be a competing, not a controlling, factor in American life.
They wanted to kill each other, or to kill for each other.