Renowned presidential historian and Tennessee native Jon Meacham will discuss his latest book, “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” at a special author event. He will be joined on stage by U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander. This event is sponsored by Friends of the Knox County Public Library and Union Ave Books. Tickets are available HERE.

The current political climate of partisan fury is not new. In The Soul of America Meacham describes how the nation survived such conflict before, as time and again, what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” found a way to lead us forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear. Meacham paints surprising portraits of presidents since the Civil War and brings to life turning points in history to include Reconstruction and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in WWI; the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women’s rights; the anti-Communist witch hunts led by McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson’s crusade against Jim Crow.

Meacham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian, is the author of The New York Times best-sellers “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.”