Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Meacham attended the McCallie School and the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, graduating summa cum laude in English Literature; he was salutatorian and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He is an initiate of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and member of the Sewanee class of 1991.

An only child, Meacham spent his high school years living with his grandfather, Judge Ellis K. Meacham. A legendary figure in Chattanooga and author, Judge Meacham is credited with giving Meacham his interest in history and the greatest generation.

He and his wife, Margaret Keith Smythe Meacham, a Mississippi native, University of Virginia and Columbia University Teachers College graduate, and the former Executive Director of the Harlem Day Charter School, live in New York City and Sewanee, Tennessee, with their three children.

Meacham joined Newsweek as a writer in January 1995, became national affairs editor in June of that year, and was named managing editor in November 1998 at age 29. In September 2006, he was promoted to editor. In August, 2010 Meacham announced that he will depart Newsweek upon completion of the sale of the magazine by the Washington Post Company.

Critics of Mr. Meacham's editorship suggested that the apparent failure of Newsweek Magazine reflected not only the problems afflicting print journalism generally, but also a lack of attention on the part of Mr. Meacham to readers' interests and perspectives.

A New York Times bestselling author, Meacham is the author of Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, a chronicle of the wartime relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill, and American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, a historical portrait of the spiritual foundation of America.

He edited Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement, a collection of distinguished nonfiction about the mid-century struggle against Jim Crow.

Meacham's newest biography, American Lion, is about Andrew Jackson and his White House circle. A bestseller, it was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

He is at work on two biographies, on Presidents Thomas Jefferson and George H. W. Bush.

A contributing editor of The Washington Monthly, Meacham is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a communicant of St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, where he has served on the Vestry of the 180 year-old Episcopal parish. He is a former trustee and member of the Board of Regents of University of the South. Meacham belongs to the Society of American Historians, the Vestry of Trinity Church Wall Street, the Leadership Council of the Harvard Divinity School, and is a trustee of the Churchill Centre. The Anti-Defamation League awarded Meacham the Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Prize. He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University in 2005 and holds five other honorary doctorates.

Books

• Andrew Jackson in the White House (2008) ISBN 978-1400063253
• American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (2006) ISBN 978-0812976663
• Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (2004) ISBN 978-0812972825
• Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement (2003) ISBN 978-0375758812