Presidential historian, Contributing Editor at TIME, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham is Executive Vice President and Executive Editor at Random House, which recently published his new book Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush.
Meacham paints an intimate and surprising portrait of an intensely private man who led the nation through tumultuous times. From the Oval Office to Camp David, from his study in the private quarters of the White House to Air Force One, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the first Gulf War to the end of Communism, Destiny and Power charts the thoughts, decisions, and emotions of a modern president who may have been the last of his kind. This is the human story of a man who was, like the nation he led, at once noble and flawed.
In this edition of Greta Talk, Meacham talks in-depth about the interviews he conducted with President George H. W. Bush over the course of nine years. He also reveals what he learned thanks to President Bush’s presidential and vice presidential audio diaries as well as the “unconditional access” Bush 41 and first lady Barbara Bush gave him. Meacham and the On the Record host even discuss how if Bush 41 hadn’t taken a job sweeping floors in Texas after graduation he wouldn’t have become president.
And why does Greta Van Susteren say Bush 41 was her “worst interview ever”?
Download and tune in to find out!
