The Books That Shaped America w/ Jon Meacham (Part 1)

This Day (An America 250 History Show) · Jun 30, 2026 · 53m

This week, as we head to the 4th of July weekend, we are bringing you a special two-part episode that provides a capstone for our month-long collaboration with Random House about the books that have shaped American history.

Over almost two hours, we took a 250-year-tour of the books that shaped this country’s history. Niki, Kellie and Jody were joined by Pulitzer-prize winning presidential historian Jon Meacham, who is also Niki’s fellow Vanderbilt professor.

We tried to touch on a lot of books, and also group them into basic schools of thought that we could use to trace how the story of…