Journalist and editor

After college, he worked at The Chattanooga Times,^[7] until he moved to Washington, D.C., in 1993 and became co-editor of Washington Monthly.^[4] In 1995, he worked for Newsweek as the national affairs editor, and became managing editor in late-1998.^{[8][6][lower-alpha 2]} In 2006, he became editor-in-chief of Newsweek's print and online formats.^[9]

A former executive editor and executive vice president at Random House,^[10] he is a contributing writer to The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post,^[10] and a contributing editor to Time magazine.^{[11][lower-alpha 3]}

Biographer and book author

He was the editor for Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement which was released in 2001. Spanning the period from 1941 to 1998, the book includes writings of noted civil-rights leaders, novelists, and journalists, like John Lewis, James Baldwin, William Faulkner, and David Halberstam.^[6] His book, Franklin and Winston, Partners of an Intimate Relationship about Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, was released in 2003.^[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.^{[9][13][lower-alpha 1]} Jill Abramson writing in a book review in The New York Times states that Meacham's books are "well researched, drawing on new anecdotal material and up-to-date historiographical interpretations" and presents his "subjects as figures of heroic grandeur despite all-too-human shortcomings". 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." Regarding the former president's stance on slavery, Meacham states, "Slavery was the rare subject where Jefferson's sense of realism kept him from marshaling his sense of hope in the service of the cause of reform."^[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. He gave eulogies for both President Bush and Barbara Bush when they died in 2018.^[14]

Other appearances

Meacham speaking at the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute in 2016

Over the years Meacham has been a frequent guest on various talk shows such as Charlie Rose, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, and Real Time with Bill Maher.^[15][16] From May 2010 to April 2011, Meacham was co-host with Alison Stewart of Need to Know on PBS. 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]

In 2014 Meacham appeared in Ken Burns' documentary series The Roosevelts: An Intimate History on PBS. He also appeared in a cameo in the 2018 film The Front Runner.

Meacham taught history at his alma mater, the University of the South, in 2014.^[1] He was a visiting professor of political science at Vanderbilt University^[19] before being appointed to the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Chair in American Presidency.^[20] Meacham is also the co-chair of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy at Vanderbilt University.

Meacham was asked to speak at the 2020 Democratic National Convention on the Soul of America. He endorsed Joe Biden, saying, "history, which will surely be our judge, can also be our guide. From Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall, we're at our best when we build bridges, not walls".^[21] According to The New York Times, Meacham was part of the team writing some of Joe Biden's speeches for the 2020 United States presidential election, including Biden's acceptance speech.^[22]

In November 2022, Meacham helped Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, write a speech announcing that she would not seek reelection to House Democratic leadership in the 118th United States Congress.^[23]