Jon Meacham

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and writer Jon Meacham was named Canon Historian in 2021 The first to hold this title, as Canon Historian, Meacham preaches and leads public conversations several times a year on issues of faith, spirituality and civic life.  

He is the first leader appointed to help shape the Cathedral College of Faith & Culture—a hub for Cathedral programming around public engagement, culture and leadership. The Cathedral confers the title “Honorary Canon” to distinguished leaders, lay or clerical, who have contributed to the mission of the Cathedral as a house of prayer for all people and a sacred space for the nation to gather.

Meacham is a distinguished writer, historian, editor and scholar of American politics and public life, focusing on leadership and American history. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2009 biography of Andrew Jackson, “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,” and has authored or co-authored 12 books in all, including three presidential biographies. Meacham was a close confidant to former President George H. W. Bush—the subject of his 2015 biography “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush”—and Meacham eulogized Bush at his funeral at the National Cathedral in 2018. Meacham occasionally advises President Joe Biden.

During his open-ended term as Canon Historian, Meacham will continue as the Rogers Chair in the American Presidency and co-chair of the Project on Unity and American Democracy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.