Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin is an American biographer, historian, former sports journalist (she was the first woman to enter the Boston Red Sox locker room in 1979), and Pulitzer Prize-winning best-selling author. She has written many popular biographies of U.S. presidents and produced several television shows related to the presidency.

Doris was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Rockville Centre. She wrote about growing up in the New York village in her memoir Wait Till Next Year.

She attended Colby College in Maine, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and in 1968 she earned a PhD in government from Harvard University. A year later, she was in Washington, D.C., as a White House Fellow during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. The president was thinking of hiring her as his Oval Office assistant, but after she wrote an anti-Vietnam War article, she was assigned to the Department of Labor. However, the president had no ill will. Reflecting back, Doris said, “The president discovered that I had been actively involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement and had written an article entitled, ‘How to Dump Lyndon Johnson’. I thought for sure he would kick me out of the program, but instead, he said, ‘Oh, bring her down here for a year, and if I can’t win her over, no one can’. After Johnson decided not to run for reelection, she ended up as a member of his staff until he left office in 1969.

After leaving the White House, Doris went to teach government at Harvard for 10 years. During this time, she helped Johnson draft his memoirs. She published her first book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, in 1977 and it became a New York Times bestseller. Since then, she has written eight critically acclaimed historical biographies. She won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for History for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt -The Home Front During World War II. In 1996, Goodwin received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Her eighth book, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, weaves together biography, memoir, and history.

She has three sons and four grandchildren and currently lives in Boston.

Recommendations For Doris Kearns Goodwin

Recommended by Sharon Gilligan

I just finished this amazing book. So much love, so much patriotism, so much history. Not really a c

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Books By Doris Kearns Goodwin

No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

The Leadership Journey: How Four Kids Became President

An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Tips and Resources From Your Doris Kearns Goodwin Book Club Friends:

Doris Kearns Goodwin is considered one of America’s premier historians of U.S. presidents, having written several historical biographies including ones on Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon B. Johnson, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, among others. She is well known for her bird’s-eye view of the Oval Office, having worked in Washington, D.C., and assisted Lyndon Johnson with his memoirs.

Her eighth book, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, once again blends memoir with presidential history but in a very personal way. Doris and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin, spent the last years of his life digging through more than 300 boxes of letters, diaries, and memorabilia and discovered they had an incredible personal time capsule of the 1960s. The result is an intimate account of politics and history that displays Goodwin’s exceptional talents at educational storytelling.

Goodwin brings a wonderful anecdotal style to her work and draws readers in with accounts of history that come alive on the page through her writing.