PULITZER Prize-winning au thor Jon Meacham, whose day job is running Newsweek, has already picked his next project.
He will write a biography of former President George H.W. Bush, Media Ink has learned.
Meacham was with the Bushes in Houston, along with Cherie Blair, wife of ex-British prime minister Tony Blair, and others celebrating the 20th anniversary of Barbara Bush’s Celebration of Reading initiative, which seeks to stamp out illiteracy.
The book is not an authorized biography, but the Bush family is believed to be cooperating.
Meacham’s bestselling Andrew Jackson tome, “American Lion,” won the Pulitzer for biography on Monday, but Meacham won’t necessarily reap a big payday from the accolade. Instead, he’ll get another mid-six-figure advance. The new book fulfills the second part of a two-book deal he signed with Random House several years ago.
Our sources say there is no timetable or scheduled publication date for the new book on the 41st US president, but it is expected to be another multi-year effort.
Hefner hosts
Elliot Spitzer’s former chief of staff appears to have vetoed a book party for a bio on sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson because the sponsor for the event was going to be the Hugh Hefner Foundation.
At least that is how it looks to author Tom Maier, whose new book “Masters of Sex” is out from the Basic Books imprint of Perseus next week.
Maier had been discussing hosting the book party at the New York Academy of Science with NYAS Executive Editor Adrienne Burke, and all seemed to be going smoothly last fall.
“When we first spoke to them they said it was customary to have a sponsor and I was able to find the Hugh Hefner Foundation as a sponsor,” said Maier.
Playboy founder Hefner had been a big backer of the original research of Masters and Johnson, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into their work at a time when mainstream organizations and government funding were leery of the subject.
Hefner’s generosity continues to this day. One insider said the amount of money under discussion as a possible contribution to the NYAS was in the area of $20,000, plus the cost of the cocktail party.
All was going well in late 2008 until Richard Baum, former chief of staff for the disgraced former governor — who resigned in a sex scandal over his trysts with high-priced call girl Ashley Dupree — became the new CEO of the New York Academy of Science.
“By Christmas, I had the idea they were punking out,” said Maier.
“They made it made it clear to me that they did not want to have the Hefner Foundation as a sponsor,” he said. “Once that was told to me, I said I was going to pick up my marbles and go to another place.”
When Media Ink reached Baum earlier this week, he employed the same skills that characterized the Spitzer administration: He stonewalled.
“I never heard of the book or the author,” he snapped.
But by the end of the day, he had changed his tune. An NYAS spokesman called to say, “We did discuss it. There were back-and-forth discussions.”
The spokesman said the NYAS ultimately rejected the book because it was “more clinically focused than biographically focused. There were several reasons [for not going ahead with the book party], there was no one reason.”
Baum later amended his earlier statement. “A lot of authors promote books to us. We felt we had other books that had more appeal to our members.”
By yesterday, Burke, Maier’s original contact, was calling back to fall on the sword for her new boss. She said she had initially broached the subject of the Playboy founder’s money in an e-mail to Maier.
Now, she says she is recanting.
“I was way out of line conjecturing that it was something to do with not wanting to take money from the Hefner Foundation,” she insisted. “I gave Tom the wrong impression, and I guess that got perpetuated.”
Burke said the NYAS is instead hosting Dan Levitan’s “The World in Six Songs” with a performance by Roseanne Cash as their entertainment event for April.
So on Monday night, Pulitzer Prize-winning medical writer Laurie Garrett, now the global health expert at the Council on Foreign Rela tions, will moderate an event at the New York Academy of Medicine, that will include as panelists Maier, author Gay Talese, whose 25-year-old book, “Thy Neighbor’s Wife” was just reissued by Harper Collins, and Dr. Robert Kolodny, former associate director of the Masters & Johnson Institute. keith.kelly@nypost.com