Jon Meacham, And There Was Light

ONLINE TICKET SALES ARE CLOSED; TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE MJCCA BOX OFFICE AT 6:30 PM.

31st Edition of the Book Festival of the MJCCA Presents

Jon Meacham, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle

In Conversation with Bill Nigut, Executive Producer, Ga Public Broadcasting; Host, Political Rewind

Author Talk and Audience Q & A

This is an in-person event at the Marcus JCC of Atlanta. Masks are optional.

*There will not be a book signing at this event; books are pre-signed.

Books will also be available for purchase on the evening of the event from the official bookseller of the book festival, A Cappella Books.

Sponsored by Greenberg Traurig

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and #1 New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham chronicles the life and moral evolution of Abraham Lincoln and explores why and how Lincoln confronted secession, threats to democracy, and the tragedy of slavery in order to expand the possibilities of America.

A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Abraham Lincoln was president when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions inextricably bound up with money, power, race, identity, and faith. He was hated and hailed, excoriated and revered. In Lincoln we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations.

This book tells the story of Lincoln from his birth on the Kentucky frontier in 1809 to his leadership during the Civil War to his tragic assassination at Ford’s Theater on Good Friday 1865: his rise, his self-education through reading, his loves, his bouts of depression, his political failures, his deepening faith, and his persistent conviction that slavery must end. In a nation shaped by the courage of the enslaved of the era and by the brave witness of Black Americans of the nineteenth century, Lincoln’s story illuminates the ways and means of politics, the marshaling of power in a belligerent democracy, the durability of white supremacy in America, and the capacity of conscience to shape the maelstrom of events.

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. A fellow of the Society of American Historians, Meacham lives in Nashville.

 Please note: All sales are final. Please choose either print-at-home or e-tickets at checkout and bring either to the event for entry!