Doris Kearns Goodwin
| Doris Kearns Goodwin | |
|---|---|
Goodwin at the LBJ Library in 2016
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| Born |
Doris Helen Kearns January 4, 1943 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Education |
Colby College (B.A.) Harvard University (Ph.D.) |
| Occupation | Historian, author, political commentator |
| Years active | 1977 to present |
| Spouse(s) | Richard N. Goodwin (m. 1975) |
| Children | Richard, Michael and Joseph Goodwin |
| Website | doriskearnsgoodwin |
Doris Kearns Goodwin (born January 4, 1943) is an American biographer, historian, and political commentator. She has authored 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); Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln; and her most recent book, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.
Kearns was born Doris Helen Kearns in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Helen Witt (née Miller) and Michael Francis Aloysius Kearns. She has a sister, Jene Kearns. Her paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants. She grew up in Rockville Centre, New York. She attended Colby College in Maine, where she was a member of Delta Delta Delta and Phi Beta Kappa, and was graduated magna cum laude in 1964 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1964 to pursue doctoral studies. In 1968, she earned a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University, with a thesis titled "Prayer and Reapportionment: An Analysis of the Relationship between the Congress and the Court."
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. "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, he brought Kearns to the White House as a member of his staff, where she focused on domestic anti-poverty efforts.
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