Most Popular Books by Doris Kearns Goodwin

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian reflects on her 42-year marriage with Dick Goodwin, one of the shining stars of John F. Kennedy''s New Frontier and the journey of going through the letters, diaries, documents and memorabilia he saved over the years.

When historian Goodwin was six years old, her father taught her how to keep score for ‘their’ team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, which forged a lifelong bond between father and daughter. Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year is a coming-of-age memoir in the era of Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider, when baseball truly was a national pastime that brought whole communities together. With her radio by her side and scorecard to hand, she recreates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans. Weaved between the games and the seasons, Goodwin tells the story of a changing America – from the lunacy of the Cold War alarm drills to McCarthy and the Rosenburg trials – as well as her own loss of innocence encapsulated by her mother’s death, her father’s lapse into despair and the Dodger’s departure from Brooklyn in 1957 following the destruction of the iconic Ebbets Field stadium. Poignant, unsentimental and deeply eloquent, Wait Till Next Year is a profound memoir about childhood and loss, baseball, and the power of sport to bind families and heal loss and reveal as metaphor the evolving heart of a nation.

With a new foreword: The New York Times–bestselling biography of President Lyndon Johnson from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Team of Rivals. Featuring a 2018 foreword by the Pulitzer Prize–winning political historian that celebrates a reappraisal of Lyndon Johnson’s legacy five decades after his presidency, from the vantage point of our current, profoundly altered political culture and climate, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s extraordinary and insightful biography draws from meticulous research in addition to the author’s time spent working at the White House from 1967 to 1969. After Johnson’s term ended, Goodwin remained his confidante and assisted in the preparation of his memoir. In Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, she traces the 36th president’s life from childhood to his early days in politics, and from his leadership of the Senate to his presidency, analyzing his dramatic years in the White House, including both his historic domestic triumphs and his failures in Vietnam. Drawing on personal anecdotes and candid conversation with Johnson, Goodwin paints a rich and complicated portrait of one of our nation’s most compelling politicians in “the most penetrating, fascinating political biography I have ever read” (The New York Times).

This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln''s mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation''s history.

Examines the distinct leadership roles of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt during the war years and discusses the dynamics of their marriage.

From Pulitzer Prize–winning author and esteemed presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, an invaluable guide to the development and exercise of leadership from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The inspiration for the multipart HISTORY Channel series Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. “After five decades of magisterial output, Doris Kearns Goodwin leads the league of presidential historians” (USA TODAY). In her “inspiring” (The Christian Science Monitor) Leadership, Doris Kearns Goodwin draws upon the four presidents she has studied most closely—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights)—to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking back to their first entries into public life, we encounter them at a time when their paths were filled with confusion, fear, and hope. Leadership tells the story of how they all collided with dramatic reversals that disrupted their lives and threatened to shatter forever their ambitions. Nonetheless, they all emerged fitted to confront the contours and dilemmas of their times. At their best, all four were guided by a sense of moral purpose. At moments of great challenge, they were able to summon their talents to enlarge the opportunities and lives of others. Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader? “If ever our nation needed a short course on presidential leadership, it is now” (The Seattle Times). This seminal work provides an accessible and essential road map for aspiring and established leaders in every field. In today’s polarized world, these stories of authentic leadership in times of apprehension and fracture take on a singular urgency. “Goodwin’s volume deserves much praise—it is insightful, readable, compelling: Her book arrives just in time” (The Boston Globe).

From #1 New York Times bestselling author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and leading historian Doris Kearns Goodwin comes a definitive middle grade guide to Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson and how they became leaders. Abraham Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Lyndon B. Johnson. They grew up and lived in very different worlds—Lincoln was poor and uneducated, his frontier cabin home deep in the harsh wilderness; Theodore Roosevelt hailed from an elegant home in the heart of New York City and traveled the world with his family; Franklin Roosevelt loved the outdoors surrounding his family’s rural estate where he was the center of attention; and Lyndon Johnson’s modest childhood home had no electricity or running water but provided a window into Texas politics. So how did each of them do it—rise to become President of the United States? What did these four kids have individually—and have in common—that made them the ones to lead the country through some of its most turbulent times?

Publisher Fact Sheet The sweeping history of two immigrant families & the marriage that brought them together.

Pulitzer Prize–winning author and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s dynamic history of Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft and the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. Winner of the Carnegie Medal. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit is a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft—a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country’s history. The Bully Pulpit is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine—Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S.S. McClure. Goodwin’s narrative is founded upon a wealth of primary materials. The correspondence of more than four hundred letters between Roosevelt and Taft begins in their early thirties and ends only months before Roosevelt’s death. Edith Roosevelt and Nellie Taft kept diaries. The muckrakers wrote hundreds of letters to one another, kept journals, and wrote their memoirs. The letters of Captain Archie Butt, who served as a personal aide to both Roosevelt and Taft, provide an intimate view of both men. The Bully Pulpit, like Goodwin’s brilliant chronicles of the Civil War and World War II, exquisitely demonstrates her distinctive ability to combine scholarly rigor with accessibility. It is a major work of history—an examination of leadership in a rare moment of activism and reform that brought the country closer to its founding ideals.

''A marvellous banquet with four leaders whose lives provide lessons for all. Pull up a chair'' Warren Buffett ''It is a safe bet that Leadership will soon sit on the nightstand of every chief executive officer in the land and will be avidly read by the legion of ambitious young people who want their jobs'' Niall Ferguson, Sunday Times In this culmination of five decades of work, Doris Kearns Goodwin offers an illuminating exploration of the origin, growth and exercise of leadership through the lives of four US presidents Are leaders born or made? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the man make the times or do the times make the man? In Leadership, acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin looks at four presidents - Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson - to show how they first recognized leadership qualities within themselves, and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking at their entry into public life and how they confronted the dilemmas of their times, we can follow their development into leaders of their time. These stories of leadership in fractured times take on a singular urgency in today''s polarized world and provide a much-needed roadmap for aspiring and established leaders. ''Colourful, fun and illuminating . . . a master storyteller'' Daniel Finkelstein, The Times