Doris Kearns Goodwin was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1943, where her bibliophilic mother and baseball-loving father cultivated her passion for books, history, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. After receiving her undergraduate degree from Colby College and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard, Goodwin became a White House Fellow under Lyndon Johnson. Critical of his foreign policy, Goodwin co-authored an article entitled "How to Remove LBJ in 1968." Johnson subsequently offered Goodwin a position as one of his special assistants, seeing her opposition as an opportunity to show the public he was not threatened by anti-war sentiment. After Johnson's term, Goodwin returned to Harvard where she taught government for ten years. While others used their much-deserved time off for rest and relaxation, Goodwin spent every weekend, holiday, and vacation at Johnson's ranch in Texas, helping him write his memoir, The Vantage Point. After Johnson's death in 1973, Goodwin drew from her close relationship with the former president to craft her book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. Following its publication in 1977, she began her next book about the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys with research help from her husband, Richard Goodwin, who had served as an advisor and speechwriter for both Kennedy and Johnson. While both of her first books were bestsellers, Goodwin received literary acclaim for her third book, No Ordinary Time about the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, which won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1995. The love of the Dodgers that her father instilled in her from birth served as inspiration for her memoir Wait Til Next Year about growing up in the 50s, which also garnered bestseller status. Goodwin's most recent work, Team of Rivals, brings new light to the story of Abraham Lincoln, portraying him as a shrewd politician rather than a grassroots railroad worker who was destined to become a great president.
• Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1991)
• The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga (1987)
• No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, the Home
Front in World War II (1995)
• Wait Til Next Year: A Memoir (1997)
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005)
