Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham jokes around with the audience before discussing his newly published book, “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power” during “An Evening with Jon Meacham,” an event hosted by the Arts & Education Council at Lindsay Street Hall in downtown Chattanooga Tuesday night.McCallie School graduate, onetime Chattanooga Times reporter, former Newsweek editor-in-chief and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham traveled to the Scenic City on Tuesday to promote his new book.
Now executive editor and executive vice president of Random House, Meacham traveled from his Nashville home for an hourlong reading at Lindsay Street Hall. The new book, “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power,” is on sale now.
A graduate of Sewanee: The University of the South, Meacham, 43, covered Chattanooga politics in the early 1990s before nearly two decades as a Newsweek reporter and editor. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.”
The Arts and Education Council sponsored Meacham’s appearance here. Before the reading Tuesday, he spoke with the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Q: In The Art of Power, you paint Thomas Jefferson as an American Renaissance man who tackled politics, medicine and numerous other disciplines. What would Jefferson have to say about the current gridlock in Washington? How would he recommend curing it?