Newsweek Managing Editor To Discuss 'Franklin And Winston' Oct. 26
Jon Meacham, managing editor of Newsweek, will speak about his best-selling book Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship at the third Ferguson-Clark Author Lecture. Meacham's talk, "Franklin and Winston: Leadership Issues for Today," will begin at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 26, in the Mayborn Museum Complex and benefits Baylor University Libraries.
At the age of 29 Meacham became managing editor of Newsweek and was named "one of the most influential editors in the news magazine business" by The New York Times. Born in Chattanooga in 1969, Meacham graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English literature from The University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., where he was the salutatorian and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He began his journalism career as an intern at the Chattanooga Times and in 1993 he became the editor of The Washington Monthly. He began working at Newsweek in January 1995, first as a writer and became national affairs editor in June of that year. He was named managing editor in November 1998.
In 2001, he edited Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement, a collection of distinguished nonfiction about the midcentury struggle against Jim Crow. His book on Churchill and Roosevelt, which chronicles the wartime relationship between the two statesmen, was released in 1993.
To write the book, Meacham drew on many new sources, including previously unpublished letters of FDR's secret love, the papers of Pamela Churchill Harriman and interviews with the few surviving people who were in Roosevelt and Churchill's joint company.
Dr. Reagan Ramsower, Baylor's acting vice president for finance and administration and dean of university libraries, said the book's subject is timely.
"It's not a history lecture -- it's a lecture about people learning to trust each other," he said. "Today there is a newfound sense of the importance of World War II. The sacrifice and victories of that war still ring clear even to younger generations, and I think people of all ages and interests will find the lecture very exciting."
Baylor alumnus Collen A. Clark established the lecture series endowment in honor of his mother, Carla Sue Ferguson Garrett, a Baylor alumna and member of the libraries' board of advisors.
Patron tickets for the Meacham lecture, which include a reception and book signing, will be $50. Other prices are for general admission ($15), Baylor faculty and staff ($10) and Baylor students ($5). Tickets may be obtained by calling (254) 710-7249 or by ordering online at www.baylor.edu/librarygifts/authortickets.