Jon Meacham – författare

For years the legendary John Seigenthaler hosted A Word on Words on Nashville's public television station, WNPT. During the show’s four-decade run (1972 to 2013), he interviewed some of the most interesting and most impor­tant writers of our time. These in-depth exchanges revealed much about the writers who appeared on his show and gave a glimpse into their creative pro­cesses. Seigenthaler was a deeply engaged reader and a generous interviewer, a true craftsman. Frye Gaillard and Pat Toomay have collected and transcribed some of the iconic interactions from the show.Featuring interviews with:Arna Bontemps • Marshall Chapman • Pat Conroy • Rodney Crowell • John Egerton • Jesse Hill Ford • Charles Fountain • William Price Fox • Kinky Friedman • Frye Gaillard • Nikki Giovanni • Doris Kearns Goodwin • David Halberstam • Waylon Jennings • John Lewis • David Maraniss • William Marshall • Jon Meacham • Ann Patchett • Alice Randall • Dori Sanders • John Seigenthaler Sr. • Marty Stuart • Pat Toomay

Rising to prominence in the late 1970s as a leading figure in the 'New Image' movement, Sultan reimagined the traditional still-life genre by breaking down his subjects into bold, essential forms and constructing paintings from the same materials used to build the spaces they occupy. His signature combinations of enamel, roofing tar, aluminum, linoleum, and spackle, along with processes like gouging, sanding, and buffing, create works that feel at once monumental and meticulously refined. The result is a compelling tension: Sultan s flowers are instantly recognizable, yet their large-scale silhouettes and heavy, abstracted surfaces challenge the expectation of fragility often associated with botanical imagery. Showcasing the full range of Sultan s artistic practice including his paintings, extensive printmaking, and works on paper this book presents a vivid survey of his career from the 1970s to today. Featured subjects include poppies, mimosas, tulips, camellias, and lantern flowers, underscoring the evolution of his imagery across decades. New essays explore the artist s relationship to key influences such as Andy Warhol and Jannis Kounellis, offering fresh insight into the conceptual and material foundations of Sultan s work. Together, these elements highlight how Sultan continues to push the boundaries of contemporary still life, transforming everyday motifs into powerful, industrially charged icons.

The relationship between the presidency and the press has transformed—seemingly overnight—from one where reports and columns were filed, edited, and deliberated for hours before publication into a brave new world where texts, tweets, and sound bites race from composition to release within a matter of seconds. This change, which has ultimately made political journalism both more open and more difficult, brings about many questions, but perhaps the two most important are these: Are the hard questions still being asked? Are they still being answered?In Columns to Characters, Stephanie A. Martin and top scholars and journalists offer a fresh perspective on how the evolution of technology affects the way presidents interact with the public. From Bill Clinton’s saxophone playing on the Arsenio Hall Show to Barack Obama’s skillful use of YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit as the first “social media president,” political communication appears to reflect the increasing fragmentation of the American public.The accessible essays here explore these implications in a variety of real-world circumstances: the “narcotizing” numbness of information overload and voter apathy; the concerns over privacy, security, and civil liberties; new methods of running political campaigns and mobilizing support for programs; and a future “post-rhetorical presidency” in which the press is all but irrelevant. Each section of the book concludes with a “reality check,” a short reflection by a working journalist (or, in one case, a former White House insider) on the presidential beat.