A Letter from Jon Meacham

This is an amazing American story. From wartime heroics in the Pacific to trying hours in the Presidency, George H. W. Bush spent his life in the service of his country. Sometimes right and sometimes wrong, he was always a gentleman (the word President Obama used in describing his Republican predecessor to me), and I wrote this book after he agreed to give me unrestricted access to his diaries. Here is politics as it really is but as we rarely see it—the highs and lows, the frustrations and the quiet joys. Together with his formidable wife, Barbara, President Bush granted me numerous interviews and opened up about his life in politics and in private. The result, I realized as I wrote the book, was a portrait of a man and a capital we may not see again: a president who put the country first over his own political interests, and a Washington that knew how to compromise. I’m not being nostalgic; this all really happened a quarter century ago. And it happened in large measure because of the generous character of George H. W. Bush.

-Jon Meacham

About Jon Meacham

Jon Meacham received the Pulitzer Prize for his 2008 biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion. An executive editor at Random House, he is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Gospel, and Franklin and Winston.

Meacham, who teaches at Vanderbilt University and at The University of the South, is a fellow of the Society of American Historians. He lives in Nashville and in Sewanee with his wife and children.