Luncheon Address Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin
Presidential Historian, Author, Political Commentator

Doris Kearns Goodwin, world-renowned historian, has been reporting on politics and baseball for over two decades. Goodwin is the author of several books and has written for leading national publications. She appears regularly on network television programs and was an on-air consultant for PBS documentaries on Lyndon B. Johnson, the Kennedy Family, Franklin Roosevelt and Ken Burns’ The History of Baseball. She was the first female journalist to enter the Red Sox locker room.

Goodwin received her B.A. from Colby College, and her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, where she taught Government including a course on the American Presidency. Following her tenure at Harvard, Goodwin served as an assistant to Lyndon Johnson in his last year in the White House. She later assisted Johnson in the preparation of his memoirs.

Her best-selling biographies include: Lyndon Johnson & The American Dream, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and the Pulitzer prize-winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Home Front During World War II.

Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir is about growing up in the 1950's in love with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It has been a New York Times best-seller, as well as a Book of the Month Club selection. A Washington Post reviewer wrote, “This is a book in the grand tradition of girlhood memoirs, dating from Louisa May Alcott to Carson McCullers and Harper Lee.”

Her most recent work entitled Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation’s history. A best-seller the first week after publication, the book has won several awards including the 2006 Lincoln Prize for outstanding work about the president and/or the Civil War.  When President Obama was asked if he could only bring one book to the White House other than the Bible what would it be, he replied “Team of Rivals.”