Doris Kearns Goodwin's Headshot

Doris Kearns Goodwin

- Panelist Blurb

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a world-renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

Goodwin is the author of six critically acclaimed and New York Times best-selling books, including her most recent, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, (November, 2013). 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. Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks Studios has acquired the film rights to the book. Spielberg and Goodwin previously worked together on Lincoln, based in part on Goodwin's award-winning Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, an epitome that illuminates Lincoln's political genius, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.

The film Lincoln grossed $275 million at the box office and earned 12 Academy Award nominations, including an Academy Award for actor Daniel Day-Lewis for his portrayal of President Abraham Lincoln.

Goodwin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, and is the author of the best sellers Wait Till Next Year, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream and The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, which was adapted into an award-winning five-part TV miniseries.

Goodwin is well known for her appearances and commentary on television, where she is seen frequently on NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, CNN, The Charlie Rose Show and Meet the Press. Other appearances include The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and many more. Goodwin has served as a consultant and has been interviewed extensively for PBS and the History Channel's documentaries on LBJ, the Kennedy family, Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham and Mary Lincoln and Ken Burns' The History of Baseball and The Civil War.

Goodwin earned a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, where she taught Government, including a course on the American Presidency. She served as an assistant to President Lyndon Johnson in his last year in the White House, and later assisted President Johnson in the preparation of his memoirs. Goodwin is the winner of the Charles Frankel Prize, given by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Sarah Josepha Hale medal and the Lincoln Prize.

Goodwin resides in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband, the writer, presidential advisor, speechwriter and playwright Richard N. Goodwin. She was the first woman to enter the Boston Red Sox locker room, and is a devoted fan of the World Series-winning team.