2008 Birthday Bash and Awards Gala Keynote Speaker

Michael Beschloss

Keynote sponsored by:

Mr. and Mrs. Robert S. Jepson, Jr.

Michael Beschloss is an award-winning historian and the author of eight books, most recently the acclaimed New York Times best seller Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989.

Newsweek has called Beschloss "the nation's leading Presidential historian." He serves as NBC's Presidential Historian-the first time any major network has created such a position-and appears regularly on Meet the Press, Today, and all NBC network news programs. He is a regular on PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. In 2005 he won an Emmy® for his role in creating the Discovery Channel series Decisions that Shook the World, which he also hosted.

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 a 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).

Beschloss's The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945 (Simon & Schuster, 2002) was a New York Times bestseller for three months and was Amazon's bestselling history book of the year. Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964 (Simon & Schuster, 1997) was Beschloss's first volume on President Lyndon Johnson's newly released secret tapes. The Wall Street Journal called it "sheer marvelous history," while the sequel, Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson's Secret White House Tapes, 1964-1965 (Simon & Schuster, 2001), was called "an incomparable portrait of a President at work" by the New York Times Book Review. Both books were national best sellers.

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.