Jon Meacham, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (New York: Random House, 2006) ("A grasp of history is essential for Americans of the center who struggle to decide how much weight to assign a religious consideration in a public matter. To fail to consult the past consigns us to what might be called the tyranny of the present--the mistaken idea that the crises of our own time are unprecedented and that we have to solve them without experience to guide us. Subject to such tyranny, we are more likely to take a narrow or simplistic view, or to let our passions get the better of our reason. If we know, however how those who came before us found the ways and means to surmount the difficulties of their age, we stand a far better chance of acting in the moment with perspective and measured judgment. Light can neither enter into nor emanate from a closed mind." Id. at 252. Certainly concern for the risk of the 'tyranny of the present' is pertinent to our current political climate and predicament.).
Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (New York: Random House, 2012) ("One of America's most important and most controversial president, Andrew Jackson is also one of the least understood. Recalled mainly as the scourge of the Indians or as the hero of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, he is only dimly remembered in the popular imagination, too far out of mind too be instructive or intriguing." "Yet of the great early presidents and Founders, Andrew Jackson is in many ways the most like us. In the saga of the Jackson presidency, one marked by both democratic triumphs and racist tragedies, we can see the American character in formation and in action. To understand him and his time helps us to understand America's perennially competing impulses. Jackson's life and work--and the nation he protected and preserved--were shaped by the struggle between grace and rage, generosity and violence, justice and cruelty." Id. at xix-xx.).
Jon Meacham, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush (New York: Random House, 2015).
Jon Meacham, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Firendship (New York: Random House, 2003).
Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (New York: Random House, 2008) ("Aspiring attorneys, he said, should devote their mornings to the law, but variety was key. 'Having ascribed proper hours to exercise, divide what remain (I mean of your vacant hours) into three portions. Give the principal to History, the other two, which should be shorter, to Philosophy and Poetry." Id. at 19.).
Jon Meacham, ed., Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Random House, 2001).
