Jon Meacham discusses his new book And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle with fellow author and historian David Blight. This program was part of the Kentucky Book Festival on October 29.
Author + Speaker Lineup
Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The Rogers Chair in the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, he is the author of the New York Times bestsellers His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, American Gospel, and Franklin and Winston.
David W. Blight is a teacher, scholar and award-winning public historian. He is Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.
Professor Blight’s most recent book, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, won nine book awards, including the Pulitzer Prize.
Blight previously taught at Amherst College for thirteen years. In 2013-14 he was the William Pitt Professor of American History at Cambridge University. David works in many capacities in the world of public history, including on boards of museums and historical societies, and as an advisor to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum team of curators. In 2012, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
