This segment originally aired live on December 21, 2015. An edited version was included in a best-of episode of The Brian Lehrer Show on January 1, 2016. The unedited audio can be found here.

2016 will mark the 25th anniversary of American military involvement in Iraq.

Which makes Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham's latest book especially timely. It's a deep dive into the political legacy of George H.W. Bush.

Jon Meacham, executive vice president and executive editor at Random House and author of Destiny and Power:The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush (Random House, 2015), talks about the positive legacy left by the senior Bush: "that the United States undertook a role of global leadership, reversed an aggression, and stuck to its guns" by not breaking the terms of engagement or trying to occupy a foreign land.

For the book, Meacham was given access to H.W. Bush's presidential audio diary, and he said one of the interest things he learned was that Bush's "spine was stiffened" by his expectation and fear that the Saudis might be willing to strike a deal with Saddam Hussein that would leave him in Kuwait and ultimately lead to a new world war; and "not, as popular memory has it, by Margaret Thatcher."