Michael Beschloss

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  Michael Beschloss is an award-winning historian and the best-selling author of nine books on the Presidency, including the first two volumes of a trilogy on President Johnson’s tape recordings. He most recently introduced and annotated the number-one New York Times best-seller, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy (2011).  He is currently writing a history on war and the Presidency.

  Beschloss was born in Chicago in 1955. An alumnus of Williams College, he also has an advanced degree from the Harvard Business School.  He has been an historian on the staff of the Smithsonian Institution (1982-1986), a senior associate member at Oxford University in England (1986-1987) and a senior fellow of the Annenberg Foundation in Washington, D.C. (1988-1996).  Newsweek has called Beschloss “the nation’s leading presidential historian.”  He serves as NBC News Presidential Historian and is a regular commentator on PBS NewsHour.

  Beschloss holds honorary doctorates from Williams College, St. Mary’s College (Maryland) and Lafayette College. He has also received the State of Illinois’s Order of Lincoln and the Harry S. Truman Public Service Award from Independence, Missouri. He is a trustee of the White House Historical Association, the National Archives Foundation and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and their two sons.