Jon Meacham, Phil Bredesen spring guests at <em>now that you ask...</em>

Janel Shoun-Smith | 

The Nelson and Sue Andrews Institute for Civic Leadership’s now that you ask… conversation series will feature a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and a former Tennessee governor this semester.

Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, will be the guest on Thursday, Feb. 20, and former Governor Phil Bredesen will be on stage on Tuesday, March 4. Both events are held at 6:30 p.m. in Lipscomb’s Shamblin Theatre. They are free and open to the public.

now that you ask…  A Conversation Series is hosted by Tom Ingram, a leader-in-residence at the Andrews Institute, the founder of The Ingram Group and a longtime political consultant and operative in Tennessee politics.

Meacham’s most recent book, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, is a No. 1 New York Times bestseller that has been named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, The Seattle Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Meacham received the Pulitzer Prize for American Lion, his bestselling 2008 biography of Andrew Jackson. Executive editor and executive vice president of Random House, Meacham is a contributing editor to Time magazine, a former editor of Newsweek, and has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post, among other publications.

Born in Chattanooga in 1969, Meacham was educated at The McCallie School and at The University of the South, where he was salutatorian and Phi Beta Kappa. He began his career as a reporter at The Chattanooga Times.

"We greatly appreciate Jon’s commitment to our local community here in Nashville,” said Ingram. “As with these interviews in the past, I'll try to understand who Jon is on a personal level and dig into what makes him tick."

Phil Bredesen served as Governor of Tennessee from 2003 until 2011 and before that as Nashville mayor from 1991 to 1999. He is a former entrepreneur who started his own health care management business and the recent author of Fresh Medicine: How to Fix Reform and Build a Sustainable Health Care System.

During his time as governor, Bredesen rebuilt an out-of-control Medicaid program; established a statewide pre-K program and the use of objective student performance data for teacher evaluation; established a broad children’s health insurance program; and recruited Volkswagen’s U.S. manufacturing operations to Tennessee.

In his time as mayor, he revitalized the city’s downtown area, rebuilt and expanded the library system, added substantially to the parks system and built a large number of new public schools.

The previous editions of now that you ask… have featured one-on-ones with Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam; Tennessee’s First Lady Crissy Haslam; John Seigenthaler, a leader in American journalism and politics; Beth Harwell, Tennessee’s first female Speaker of the House; Loucas George, former producer of the ABC show “Nashville,” and David Keene, Opinion Editor for The Washington Times.

For more information visit leadingvoices.lipscomb.edu or call the Institute for Civic Leadership at 615.966.6155.