Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin
Goodwin speaking at a conference on October 24, 2006.
Born	Doris Helen Kearns (1943-01-04) January 4, 1943 Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States
Nationality	American
Education	Colby College (B.A) Harvard University (PhD)
Occupation	Author
Years active	Since 1977
Known for	Historian, author, political commentator
Spouse(s)	Richard N. Goodwin (m. 1975)
Children	Richard, Michael and Joseph Goodwin
Website
doriskearnsgoodwin.com

Doris Kearns Goodwin (born Doris Helen Kearns; January 4, 1943) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American biographer, historian, and political commentator. She is the author of biographies of several U.S. Presidents, including Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream; The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga; No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1995); Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln; and her most recent book, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.

Early life and education

Kearns was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Helen Witt (née Miller) and Michael Francis Aloysius Kearns.^[1][2] Her paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants.^[3] She grew up in Rockville Centre, New York. She attended Colby College in Maine, where she was a member of Delta Delta Delta and Phi Beta Kappa, and was graduated magna cum laude in 1964 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1964^[4] to pursue doctoral studies. In 1968, she earned a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University, with a thesis titled "Prayer and Reapportionment: An Analysis of the Relationship between the Congress and the Court."^{[citation needed]}

Career and awards

In 1967, Kearns went to Washington, D.C., as a White House Fellow during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Johnson initially expressed interest in hiring the young intern as his Oval Office assistant, but after an article by Kearns appeared in The New Republic laying out a scenario for Johnson's removal from office over his conduct of the war in Vietnam, she was instead assigned to the Department of Labor; Goodwin has written that she felt relieved to be able to remain in the internship program in any capacity at all. ^[5] After Johnson decided not to run for reelection, he brought Kearns to the White House as a member of his staff, where she focused on domestic anti-poverty efforts. ^[6]

After Johnson left office in 1969, Kearns taught government at Harvard for ten years, including a course on the American presidency. During this period she also assisted Johnson in drafting his memoirs. Her first book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, which drew upon her conversations with the late president, was published in 1977. It became a New York Times bestseller and provided a launching pad for her literary career.

Goodwin was the first female journalist to enter the Boston Red Sox locker room. She consulted on and appeared in Ken Burns's 1994 documentary, Baseball.

Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Homefront During World War II.

Goodwin received an honorary L.H.D. from Bates College in 1998.^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]} She was awarded an honorary doctorate from Westfield State College in 2008.

Goodwin won the 2005 Lincoln Prize, awarded for the best book about the American Civil War, for Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, a book about Abraham Lincoln's presidential cabinet. Part of the book was adapted by Tony Kushner into the screenplay for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. She is a member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission advisory board.^{[13][14][15][16]} The book also won the inaugural American History Book Prize given by the New-York Historical Society.

Since 1997, Goodwin was a member of the board of directors for Northwest Airlines.^[17]

She is a recurring guest commentator on Meet the Press, appearing many times (during the tenures of hosts Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw, and David Gregory), as well as a regular guest on Charlie Rose, appearing a total of forty times since 1994.

In 2002, The Weekly Standard determined that her book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys used without attribution numerous phrases and sentences from three other books: Time to Remember, by Rose Kennedy; The Lost Prince, by Hank Searl; and Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times, by Lynne McTaggart.^[18] Goodwin admitted that she had previously reached a large "private settlement" with McTaggart over the issue. She wrote in Time: Slate magazine also reported that there were multiple passages in Goodwin's book on the Roosevelts (No Ordinary Time) that were apparently taken from Joseph Lash's Eleanor and Franklin, Hugh Gregory Gallagher's FDR's Splendid Deception, and other books, although she "scrupulously" footnoted the material. Furthermore, the Los Angeles Times reported similar circumstances concerning her book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys.^[19][20] The allegations of plagiarism caused her to leave her position as a regular guest on the PBS NewsHour program.^[21]

Stephen King met with Goodwin while he was writing his novel 11/22/63, due to her being an assistant to Johnson, and King used some of her ideas in the novel on what a worst-case scenario would be like if history had changed.^[22]

Personal life

In 1975, Kearns married Richard N. Goodwin,^[23] who had worked in the Johnson and Kennedy administrations as an adviser and a speechwriter. They live in Concord, Massachusetts and have three sons, Richard, Michael, & Joseph. Richard's latest short film, For Rent, earned a Coup De Coeur distinction at the Cannes Short Film Corner, where it screened in May 2011.^[24] Michael, a high school social studies teacher, is the founder of Rivers and Revolutions, a tuition-free interdisciplinary summer program designed to teach high school students the relationship between literature, history, science, mathematics, philosophy, and the arts.^[25] Michael is currently pursuing a Masters of Education at Harvard University. On September 12, 2001, Joseph joined the U.S. Army. For his service in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.^[26] He is currently in law school. On September 6, 2012, Joseph ran for a seat in the Massachusetts State Senate.^[27]

In her contributions to Ken Burns' award-winning documentary television series Baseball (1994), Goodwin related stories about her father and herself being Brooklyn Dodgers fans. She noted that her father would have her document the baseball game from the radio and replay the events of the game once her father returned home. She cited this as her first experience as a historian. She chronicles her and her family's love for the Dodgers until the team's move to Los Angeles in 1957. When she met her husband in the late 1960s, she became a Boston Red Sox fan even though her dad became a New York Mets fan; one of her sisters later became a Colorado Rockies fan, and her other sister stayed a Dodgers fan.

In 2013, Goodwin wrote a well-reviewed foreword to John Sexton's book Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game.^[28]

Bibliography

• Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. 1977. 
• The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga. 1987. 
• No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. 1995. ISBN 978-0-671-64240-2. 
• Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir. 1997. 
• Every Four Years: Presidential Campaign Coverage. 2000. ISBN 0-9655091-7-6. 
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. 2005. ISBN 0-684-82490-6. 
• The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. 2013. ISBN 978-1416547860. 

Notes

External links

• doriskearnsgoodwin.com, her official website
• Doris Kearns Goodwin at TED
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• A film clip "The Open Mind -Another Dynasty: The Kennedys (1987)" is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• Doris Kearns Goodwin at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Doris Kearns Goodwin in libraries (WorldCat catalog)