History and Fate: A Conversation with Doris Kearns Goodwin

Friends of the LBJ Library | Oct, 16 2024 6:30PM - 7:30PM

History and Fate: A Conversation with Doris Kearns Goodwin

On October 16, 2024, Doris Kearns Goodwin joined us for a conversation co-sponsored by UT Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History and the LBJ Presidential Library. The event celebrates Goodwin’s New York Times bestselling memoir, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, and the opening of the Briscoe Center’s new exhibition, History and Fate: The Goodwins and the 1960s.

Artfully weaving together biography, memoir, and history, An Unfinished Love Story takes readers on the emotional journey of Doris and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin, as they delve into more than 300 boxes of letters, diaries, documents, and memorabilia that Dick had saved for more than fifty years. They soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s, covering the pivotal events and figures of the decade—John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and especially Lyndon Johnson, who significantly impacted both their lives. 

Those 300 boxes of archival material—the Richard Goodwin Papers—and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s own papers are now part of the historical treasures in the Briscoe Center’s collections. History and Fate, the new exhibition at the Briscoe Center, presents an insider’s perspective into the 1960s through the papers themselves, tracing the stories of the Goodwins’ relationship, their proximity to power, and reflections on a tumultuous era seen in its most intimate moments. 

Erin Purdy, deputy executive director of the Briscoe Center, moderated the conversation. 
 

About Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times #1 best-selling author. She is best known as a preeminent public intellectual, presidential historian, and biographer frequently seen on television putting today’s news into historical context.

Her first book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, became a national bestseller and acclaimed critically. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. Her bestselling book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys was adapted into an award-winning five-part television miniseries. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism was awarded the Carnegie Medal. 

Doris earned the Lincoln Prize for Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which provided the basis for Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award-winning film Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Her newest book, The Leadership Journey: How Four Kids Became President, is her first for young readers. Illustrated by award-winning artist Amy June Bates, The Leadership Journey was adapted by Ruby Shamir from Doris’ recent book, Leadership In Turbulent Times

Video & Photos

LBJ Library photo by Jay Godwin
The event celebrated Goodwin’s New York Times bestselling memoir, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, and the opening of the Briscoe Center’s new exhibition, History and Fate: The Goodwins and the 1960s.
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An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, and the opening of the Briscoe Center’s new exhibition, History and Fate: The Goodwins and the 1960s
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(L-R) Erin Purdy and Doris Kearns Goodwin. On October 16, 2024, the Briscoe Center for American History and the LBJ Presidential Library co-sponsored History and Fate: A Conversation with Doris Kearns Goodwin at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas.

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