Doris Helen Kearns was born inBrooklyn, New York, to Helen Witt (née Miller) and Michael Francis Aloysius Kearns. She has two sisters, Charlotte Kearns and Jeanne Kearns.[6][7] She was raisedCatholic.[8] Her paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants.[9]
In 1967, Kearns went to Washington, D.C., as aWhite House Fellow during theLyndon B. Johnson administration.[17] Johnson initially expressed interest in hiring the young intern as his Oval Office assistant, but after an article by Kearns appeared inThe New Republic laying out a scenario for Johnson's removal from office over his conduct of thewar 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'."[18] 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.[19]
After Johnson left office in 1969, Kearns taught government atHarvard for ten years, including a course on the American presidency.[20] Harvard controversially denied her tenure. The Government Department recommended her for tenure and an ad hoc committee approved her tenure case, but Harvard University PresidentDerek Bok rejected the tenure case.[21] 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 aNew York Times bestseller and provided a launching pad for her literary career.
A sports journalist as well, Goodwin was the first woman to enter theBoston Red Sox locker room in 1979.[22] She consulted on and appeared inKen Burns' 1994 documentaryBaseball.[23]
Stephen King met with Goodwin while he was writing his novel11/22/63, 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.[38]
In 2002,The Weekly Standard determined that Goodwin's bookThe Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys used without attribution numerous phrases and sentences from three other books:Times to Remember byRose Kennedy;The Lost Prince byHank Searls; andKathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times byLynne McTaggart.[45] McTaggart remarked, "If somebody takes a third of somebody's book, which is what happened to me, they are lifting out the heart and guts of somebody else's individual expression."[46] Goodwin had previously reached a "private settlement" with McTaggart over the issue. In an article she wrote forTime magazine, she said, "Though my footnotes repeatedly cited Ms. McTaggart's work, I failed to provide quotation marks for phrases that I had taken verbatim... The larger question for those of us who write history is to understand how citation mistakes can happen."[47] In its analysis of the controversy,Slate magazine criticized Goodwin for the aggrieved tone of her explanation, and suggested Goodwin's worst offense was allowing the plagiarism to remain in future editions of the book even after it was brought to her attention.[48]
The plagiarism controversy caused Goodwin to resign from thePulitzer Prize Board[49] and to relinquish her position as a regular guest on thePBS NewsHour program.[50]
TheLos Angeles Times also reported on a passage inNo Ordinary Time which appeared to use highly similar language and phrasing to one inJoseph P. Lash's 1971 bookEleanor & Franklin; Goodwin includes a citation for Lash in the bibliography, though the article questions if this is sufficient for the use of similar "framing language" between the two texts. In response, Goodwin said that she had met "the highest standards of historical scholarship" for the passage in question.[51]
Growing up onLong Island, Goodwin was a fan of theBrooklyn Dodgers. She remembered that her father would have her document the events of a baseball game from the radio, and "replay" the events for him when he returned home. Goodwin stopped following baseball after the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, but later became aBoston Red Sox fan while attending Harvard, and is now aseason ticket holder.[52]
In 1975, Kearns marriedRichard N. Goodwin,[53] who had worked in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations as an adviser and speechwriter. The two met in mid-1972 atHarvard's Institute of Politics.[54] Richard Goodwin was a widower who had a son, also named Richard, from his first marriage. At the time he and Kearns married, his son was nine years old.[55][56] The couple, who lived inConcord, Massachusetts, had two sons together, Michael and Joseph.[57] Richard Goodwin died on May 20, 2018, after a brief battle with cancer.[56]
^Goodwin, Doris Kearns (October 1995).Amazon.com: No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (9780684804484): Doris Kearns Goodwin: Books. Simon & Schuster.ISBN0684804484.
^Goodwin, Doris Kearns (April 22, 1997)."109th Landon Lecture". Landon Lecture Series at Kansas State University. Archived fromthe original on June 28, 2017. RetrievedFebruary 2, 2006.
