Exclusive: New Bush Sr. book draws on Barbara's scrapbooks, unpublished photos

• The book also draws on decades of scrapbooks kept by the late Barbara Bush, the former first lady. Her scrapbooks are held at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Texas.

Details: In an exclusive excerpt from "A Call to Service" provided to Axios, Meacham writes that the "character of George H.W. Bush ... oftentimes reflected the best impulses of the American project."

"It is true, of course, that Bush was not a monument but a man, not a saint but a statesman. But just enough of the time, at just enough critical junctures, the 41st president chose the right over the wrong, the difficult over the easy, the arduous over the expedient. Bush's life code, as he once put it in a letter to his mother, was: 'Tell the truth. Don't blame people. Be strong. Do your Best. Try hard. Forgive. Stay the course. All that kind of thing.'"

Of note: Meacham has written books on Abraham Lincoln, John Lewis and other historic political figures.

Go deeper: Historian Jon Meacham: Bending the arc of the moral universe "requires all of us"