Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize Winning Author and Historian, to Speak at the Bijou Theatre for Presidents' Day
The Honorable Bill Haslam, Governor of Tennessee, to introduce program

KNOXVILLE -- East Tennessee Historical Society and Friends of the Knox County Public Library are proud to present A Presidential Conversation with Jon Meacham at 7:30 p.m., President's Day, February 18, 2013, at the Historic Bijou Theatre. The Honorable Bill Haslam, Governor of Tennessee, and a history buff in his own right, will deliver the introduction.

A native son of Tennessee, Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of four books and many essays. He is a former co-anchor of the public-affairs broadcast Need to Know on PBS and former editor of Newsweek. In honor of President's Day and the upcoming exhibit on the War of 1812 at the Museum of East Tennessee History, the East Tennessee Historical Society and the Friends of the Knox County Public Library are pleased to present this important event.

Mr. Meacham's latest book, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, is topping The New York Times' bestseller's list. His book, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, debuted at #2 on The New York Times' bestseller list. On April 20, 2009, American Lion was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Mr. Meacham is also the author of 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, about the wartime relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill. Named a book of the year by The Los Angeles Times, it won The Churchill Centre's 2005 Emery Reves Award for the best book of the year on Winston Churchill and the William H. Colby Military Writers' Symposium's Book of the Year Award.

In 2009, Mr. Meacham was elected to the Society of American Historians. He serves on the Board of Trustees of The Churchill Centre, the National Advisory Council of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, and on the Advisory Committee of the Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier.

Mr. Meacham has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Washington Post, Slate, and Los Angeles Times Book Review. In 2001, he edited Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement (Random House), a collection of distinguished nonfiction about the midcentury struggle against Jim Crow. He has served as a judge for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and was awarded the Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Medal by the Anti-Defamation League.

Born in Chattanooga in 1969, Meacham was educated at St. Nicholas School, The McCallie School, and The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English literature; he was salutatorian and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He currently resides in Nashville.

Tickets cost $30/$20 and go on sale January 18, 2013, through www.knoxvilletickets.com, www.knoxbijou.com or by calling the Tennessee Theatre box office at (865) 684-1200.

A Presidential Conversation is sponsored by WUOT 91.9FM, Knoxville News Sentinel, WBIR, Comcast and the Knox County Public Library. For more information, please visit www.easttnhistory.org, www.knoxfriends.org, or www.knoxlib.org.

Published January 15, 2013