多丽丝·卡恩斯·古德温

Doris Helen Kearns Goodwin (born January 4, 1943) is an American biographer, historian, former sports journalist, and political commentator. She has written biographies of numerous U.S. presidents. Goodwin's book No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1995. Goodwin produced the American television miniseries Washington. She was also executive producer of Abraham Lincoln, a 2022 docudrama on the History Channel. This latter series was based on Goodwin's Leadership in Turbulent Times.

Early life and education

Doris Helen Kearns was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Helen Witt (née Miller) and Michael Francis Aloysius Kearns. She has two sisters, Charlotte Kearns and Jeanne Kearns. She was raised Catholic. Her paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants.

She grew up in Rockville Centre, New York, where she graduated from South Side High School. Her formative years in Rockville Centre are the subject of her 1997 memoir, Wait Till Next Year. She attended Colby College in Maine, where she was a member of Delta Delta Delta and Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated magna cum laude in 1964 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science. She was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1964 to pursue doctoral studies. In 1968, she earned a PhD in government from Harvard University, with a thesis titled "Prayer and Reapportionment: An Analysis of the Relationship between the Congress and the Court."

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. "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.

After Johnson left office in 1969, Kearns taught government at Harvard for ten years, including a course on the American presidency. Harvard controversially denied her tenure. The Government Department recommended her for tenure and an ad hoc committee approved her tenure case, but Harvard University President Derek Bok rejected the tenure case. During her period at Harvard, she also assisted Johnson in drafting his memoirs. Her first book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, a biography which drew upon her conversations with the late president, was published in 1977, becoming a New York Times bestseller and provided a launching pad for her literary career.

A sports journalist as well, Goodwin was the first woman to enter the Boston Red Sox locker room in 1979. She consulted on and appeared in Ken Burns' 1994 documentary Baseball.

Goodwin won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for History for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front During World War II.

In 1996, Goodwin received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

Goodwin received an honorary L.H.D. from Bates College in 1998. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from Westfield State College in 2008.

Goodwin was on air talking to Tom Brokaw of NBC News during their 2000 Presidential election night coverage, when Brokaw announced NBC's projection that the state of Florida had voted for George W. Bush, thus making him president.

Goodwin won the 2006 Lincoln Prize (for the best book about the American Civil War) for Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, a book about Abraham Lincoln's presidential cabinet. Part of the book was adapted by Tony Kushner into the screenplay for Steven Spielberg's 2012 film Lincoln. She was a member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission advisory board. The book also won the inaugural American History Book Prize given by the New-York Historical Society.

In 2006, Goodwin received The Lincoln Forum's Richard Nelson Current Award of Achievement.

Goodwin was a member of the board of directors of Northwest Airlines.

Goodwin is a frequent guest commentator on Meet the Press, having appeared many times during the tenures of hosts Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, and Chuck Todd. She was also a regular guest on Charlie Rose, appearing a total of forty-eight times beginning in 1994.

Stephen King met with Goodwin while he was writing his novel 11/22/63, since she had been an assistant to Johnson. King used some of her ideas in the novel on what a worst-case scenario would be like if history had changed.

In 2014, Kearns won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction for The Bully Pulpit. It was also a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist (History, 2013) and was named one of the Christian Science Monitor's 15 best nonfiction books in 2013.

In 2016, she appeared, as herself, in the fifth episode of American Horror Story: Roanoke, and she made a cameo appearance playing herself as a teacher in the Simpsons episode "The Town".

In April 2024, Simon & Schuster published Kearns' book, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.