 Doris
Kearns Goodwin
Activity Sheet
Biography from
Jeri
Charles Associates
 As assistant to
President Lyndon Johnson during his last year in the White House,
Doris Kearns Goodwin was there while history was being made.
She later assisted Johnson on the preparation of his memoirs,
Lyndon Johnson & The American Dream. It became a New
York Times bestseller and Book of The Month Club selection. The
reviewer for the New York Times called it "the most penetrating
biography", he had ever read.
Prior to her stint
at the White House, Ms. Goodwin taught for ten years at Harvard
University as Professor of Government that included a course
on the American Presidency.
In 1987, The
Fitzgaeralds & The Kennedys was a New York Times bestseller
for five months. It won The Literary Guild and numerous other
awards. In 1990, it was made into a six hour miniseries that
aired on ABC TV. The Times reviewer said, rarely has popular
history rung so authentic".
Her next success
was, No Ordinary Time:Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The
American Homefront During World War II which was awarded
the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1995. She also received the
Harold Washington Literary Award; the New England Bookseller
Association Award; the Ambassador Book Award and the Washington
 Monthly
Book Award. The book was a New York Times bestseller for six
months and was optioned by the late Director Alan Pakula for
a feature film.
Wait Till Next
Year: A Memoir was published in 1997. Her tale of growing
up in the 1950's and her love of the Brooklyn Dodgers became
a New York Times bestseller and Book of the Month Club selection.
"this is a book in the grand tradition of girlhood memoirs,
dating from Louisa May Alcott to Carson McCullers and Harper
Lee", the Washington Post reviewer wrote. It has been optioned
by Edgar Scherick for a TV movie.
Ms. Goodwin has
written numerous articles on politics and baseball for leading
national publications. She is a regular panalist on PBS's "The
News Hour with Jim Lehrer" and a frequent commentator on
NBC and MSNBC. She has been consultant and on-air person for
PBS documentaries on LBJ, the Kennedy family, Franklin Roosevelt
and Ken Burn's, "The History of Baseball". She is the
winner of the Charles Frankel Prize given by the National Endowment
for the Humanities and the Sara Josepha Hale medal. And she is
the first woman to enter the Red Sox locker room.
Ms. Goodwin received
her B.A. from Colby College, where she was Phi Beta Kappa, Magna
cum laude and her Ph.D. in Government at Harvard University.
She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. A member of Harvard University's
Board of Overseers, she is also a member of the Society of American
Historians.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
is married to the writer Richard Goodwin who worked in the White
House under both Kennedy and Johnson. His experience as the investigator
who uncovered the quiz show scandals of the 1950's was captured
in the recent Academy Award nominated film "Quiz Show",
directed by Robert Redford. She is the mother of three sons.
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Quotes
Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that
is left that really matters is history.
And as for the final sphere of love and friendship, I can
only say it gets harder once the natural communities of college
and home town are gone. It takes work and commitment, demands
toleration for human frailties, forgiveness for the inevitable
disappointment and betrayals that come even with the best of
relationships.
Generally, what gives me the most pleasure really is sharing
with the audience some of the experiences and the stories of
more than two decades now spent in writing this series of presidential
biographies. In being able to talk about how you do it, what
the experience is in interviewing people and talking to people
who knew the people and going through the letters and sifting
it through. Essentially just telling your favorite stories of
the various people.... The great thing is that as you accumulate
more and more subjects, there are more and more great stories
to share. I think what the audience likes to hear are some of
the stories that reveal character and the human traits of some
of these figures who might otherwise seem distant to them.
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No Ordinary Time
Book Description from amazon.com
A compelling chronicle
of a nation and its leaders during the period when modern America
was created. With an uncanny feel for detail and a novelist's
grasp of drama and depth, Doris Kearns Goodwin brilliantly narrates
the interrelationship between the inner workings of the Roosevelt
White House and the destiny of the United States. Goodwin paints
a comprehensive, intimate portrait that fills in a historical
gap in the story of our nation under the Roosevelts.
No Ordinary
Time is a monumental work, a brilliantly conceived chronicle
of one of the most vibrant and revolutionary periods in the history
of the United States. With an extraordinary collection of details,
Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story
lines--Eleanor and Franklin's marriage and remarkable partnership,
Eleanor's life as First Lady, and FDR's White House and its impact
on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin effectively
melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate
portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during
which a new, modern America was born. Read
an exerpt.
 Wait Till Next Year
Book Description from amazon.com
Set in the suburbs
of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year is Doris
Kearns Goodwin's touching memoir of growing up in love with her
family and baseball. She re-creates the postwar era, when the
corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were
equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans.
We meet the people
who most influenced Goodwin's early life: her mother, who taught
her the joy of books but whose debilitating illness left her
housebound: and her father, who taught her the joy of baseball
and to root for the Dodgers of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella,
Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges. Most important, Goodwin
describes with eloquence how the Dodgers' leaving Brooklyn in
1957, and the death of her mother soon after, marked both the
end of an era and, for her, the end of childhood. Read
an exerpt.
Dartmouth Commencement Address
http://www.dartmouth.edu/pages/news/releases/june98/dkg.html
Pulitzer Prize for History
http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1995/history/bio/
Speaker's Bureau
http://www.lecturenow.com/People/DorisGoodwin.htm
Slate: The sunny-side-up historian
http://slate.msn.com/Assessment/01-03-09/Assessment.asp
About.com site
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbiogoodwindk.htm?once=true&
Quotes by Doris Kearns Goodwin
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/qu/blqugoo2.htm
Booknotes on No Ordinary Time
http://www.booknotes.org/authors/10291.htm
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