Former Newsweek editor and bestselling author Jon Meacham comes to campus on Monday evening for the Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture based off his critically acclaimed book on America's seventh president. The talk, "Andrew Jackson and the Art of Leadership: Old Hickory in a New Century," takes place at 7:30 p.m. in McCrary Theatre.
Jon Meacham, “Andrew Jackson and the Art of Leadership: Old Hickory in a New Century” – Sept. 27
McCrary Theatre, 7:30 p.m.
The Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture
Andrew Jackson’s leadership in tumultuous times provided his White House and the country with a steadying force, and his gift for exerting control over the seemingly uncontrollable made him one of our greatest presidents. Meacham will describe how Jackson rose to power and stayed there managing both elite and mass opinion by force of personality with an instinct for power.
Meacham’s latest book, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, draws on previously unavailable letters in the possession of the president’s descendants. An immediate bestseller when published in 2008, American Lion won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2009. Meacham describes his work as a “portrait of Jackson and of many of the people who lived and worked with him in his tumultuous years in power,” rather than an academic study of Jackson’s presidency.
Meacham, who served as editor for Newsweek for four years, has written two other New York Times bestsellers—American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation and Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, which explores the wartime relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill. Meacham also edited the nonfiction collection Voices in Our Blood: America’s Best on the Civil Rights Movement and has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, and The Washington Post Book World. Earlier this year, Meacham began co-anchoring PBS’s “Need To Know,” a weekly prime-time news and public affairs series.
A 1991 graduate of The University of the South, Meacham currently serves on the Council on Foreign Relations, the Harvard Divinity School Leadership Council, and the Board of Trustees of The Churchill Centre. He and his family live in New York City.
Admission: $12 or Elon ID. Tickets available August 31.
Previous Baird Pulitzer Prize Lectures
2009-2010 C.K. Williams, September 22, 2009
2008-2009 David McCullough, October 23, 2008
2007-2008 George Will, September 20, 2007
2006-2007 Frank McCourt, February 13, 2007
2005-2006 Edmund Morris, October 6, 2005
2004-2005 Anna Quindlen, September 27, 2004
2003-2004 Thomas L. Friedman, September 29, 2003
2002-2003 David Halberstam, January 16, 2003
2001-2002 David McCullough, September 19, 2001