This event will be held at the Paramount Theater. Tickets are available at theparamount.net.
Please join us for an evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham, who will speak about his new book, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels. New York Times bestselling author John Grisham will moderate the discussion. A book signing will follow.
In The Soul of America, Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history. Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day.
Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women’s rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson’s crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear—a struggle that continues even now.
Meacham is also the author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power and American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.
John Grisham is a New York Times bestselling writer, attorney, politician, and activist best known for his legal thrillers. His books have been translated into 42 languages and published worldwide.
This event will take place at the Paramount Theater, which is located at 215 E. Main St, Charlottesville, VA, 22902. This event is in partnership with Virginia Humanities and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello.
Photo Credits: Heidi Ross (Jon Meacham), Bob Krasner (John Grisham)
