Jump to content

Doris Kearns Goodwin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Scientizzle (talk | contribs) at 12:15, 2 July 2013 (Reverted edits by 173.2.110.130 (talk) to last version by 99.129.228.207). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Doris Kearns Goodwin
Goodwin speaking at a conference, October 24, 2006
Born
Doris Helen Kearns

(1943-01-04) January 4, 1943 (age 81)
Brooklyn, New York
NationalityAmerican
EducationColby College (B.A)
Harvard University (PhD)
OccupationAuthor
Years active1977-
Known forHistorian, author, political commentator
SpouseRichard N. Goodwin (m. 1975)
ChildrenRichard, Michael and Joseph Goodwin
Websitedoriskearnsgoodwin.com

Doris Kearns Goodwin (born Doris Helen Kearns; January 4, 1943) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American biographer, historian, and an oft-seen 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); and her most recent book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Early life and education

Doris 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 Tri Delta and Phi Beta Kappa and 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 entitled "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, 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 (2012 film). 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 has been a member of the board of directors for Northwest Airlines.[17]

Goodwin is currently working on her next book which will be about Theodore Roosevelt, focusing on his relationship with William Howard Taft, the election of 1912 and the muckraking journalism of the Progressive era.

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.

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.[18]

Plagiarism controversy

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.[19]

McTaggart weighed in, "If somebody takes a third of somebody's book, which is what happened to me, they are lifting out the heart and guts of somebody else's individual expression."[20] Goodwin admitted that she had previously reached a large "private settlement" with McTaggart over the issue. She wrote in Time:

Fourteen years ago, not long after the publication of my book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, I received a communication from author Lynne McTaggart pointing out that material from her book on Kathleen Kennedy had not been properly attributed. I realized that she was right. Though my footnotes repeatedly cited Ms. McTaggart's work, I failed to provide quotation marks for phrases that I had taken verbatim, having assumed that these phrases, drawn from my notes, were my words, not hers. I made the corrections she requested, and the matter was completely laid to rest—until last week, when the Weekly Standard published an article reviving the issue. The larger question for those of us who write history is to understand how citation mistakes can happen.[21]

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.[22][23] The allegations of plagiarism caused her to leave her position as a guest pundit on the PBS NewsHour program.[24]

Personal life

In 1975, Kearns married Richard N. Goodwin,[25] 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's latest short film, For Rent, earned a Coup De Coeur distinction at the Cannes Short Film Corner, where it screened in May 2011.[26] 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.[27] 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.[28] He is currently in law school. On September 6, 2012, Joseph ran for State Senate.[29]

In her contributions to Ken Burns' award-winning documentary film Baseball Goodwin related stories about her father and herself being Brooklyn Dodger 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 fateful move to Los Angeles in 1957. When she met her husband in the late 60s, she became a Red Sox fan even though her dad became a Mets fan, one of her sisters later became a 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.[30]

Books

Notes

  1. ^ "Who's who of Pulitzer Prize winners - Google Books". Books.google.ca. Retrieved 2013-05-27.
  2. ^ "100 Most Popular Nonfiction Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies - Bernard Alger Drew - Google Books". Books.google.ca. Retrieved 2013-05-27.
  3. ^ "STLtoday.com - Archive - News". Nl.newsbank.com. 1998-01-05. Retrieved 2013-05-27.
  4. ^ "About Our Fellows". Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Retrieved 2008-10-27. [dead link]
  5. ^ "...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'." Dartmouth 1998 commencement address (accessdate=2007-07-27)
  6. ^ Lyndon B. Johnson and the American Dream, "Prologue."
  7. ^ "About the Author". Doris Kearns Goodwin.
  8. ^ "Doris Kearns Goodwin (January 4, 1943 - ) - Biographer; Assistant to President Lyndon Johnson". Women's History. about.com. Retrieved \. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  9. ^ "Doris Kearns Goodwin: History, Baseball, and the Art of the Narrative". Smithsonian Associates. October 20, 1997.
  10. ^ Goodwin, Doris Kearns (April 22, 1997). "109th Landon Lecture". 109th Landon Lecture. Landon Lecture Series at Kansas State University.
  11. ^ Goodwin, Doris Kearns (June 14, 1998). "Commencement address at Dartmouth College". Dartmouth News.
  12. ^ Goodwin, Doris Kearns (Summer 1998). "Lessons of Presidential Leadership". Leader to Leader. Archived from the original on 2006-03-02.
  13. ^ Template:Google video November 2, 2005 (skip to 30 minute mark)
  14. ^ Address to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council November 15, 2005
  15. ^ City Arts and Lectures appearance November 16, 2005
  16. ^ "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln". Books of Our Time. Retrieved February 10, 2012.
  17. ^ "About Delta". Nwa.com. Retrieved February 10, 2012.
  18. ^ "Stephen King's New Monster", Alexandra Alter, WSJ, 10/28/2011
  19. ^ Bo Crader, "A Historian and Her Sources," The Weekly Standard, January 28, 2002
  20. ^ Jill Lawless, "Author Says Doris Kearns Goodwin Took 'Heart and Guts' From Her Book," Associated Press, March 23, 2002.
  21. ^ Goodwin, Doris Kearns (January 27, 2002). "How I Caused That Story". Time.
  22. ^ Peter H. King, "As History Repeats Itself, the Scholar Becomes the Story," Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2002.
  23. ^ Noah, Timothy (November 13, 2003). "Historians Rewrite History: The Campaign to Exonerate Doris Kearns Goodwin". Slate.
  24. ^ Lewis, Mark (February 27, 2002). "Doris Kearns Goodwin And The Credibility Gap". Forbes. Retrieved February 10, 2012.
  25. ^ Roughier, Ray (March 15, 1995). "The Natural TV producers love Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian and baseball fan, who is right at home in front of a camera. Now Mainers will have three chances to see her in person". Portland Press Herald. p. 1C. Retrieved 2009-09-06.
  26. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2064773/
  27. ^ "Rivers & Revolutions". Riversandrevolutions.org. Retrieved February 10, 2012.
  28. ^ "Afghanistan's Other Front". The New York Times. September 16, 2009.
  29. ^ Clemetson, Lynette "Threats and Responses: in Uniform; To Child of Vietnam War Dissenters, Recent Call to Arms Rang True." The New York Times. February 18, 2003. January 19, 2010.
  30. ^ Dionne, E.J. (April 1, 2013) “Hope’s Opening Day”. The Washington Post.[1]

Template:Persondata

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Doris_Kearns_Goodwin&oldid=562533712"