Doris Kearns Goodwin with "An Unfinished Love Story"

Name: Doris Kearns Goodwin with "An Unfinished Love Story"
Start: 2024-06-05T19:00:00-04:00
Location: The Music Hall

Schedule

Wed Jun 05 2024 at 07:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

The Music Hall | Portsmouth, NH

https://www.themusichall.org/events/doriskearnsgoodwin/
Dick and Doris Goodwin were married for forty-two years and married to American history even longer. In his twenties, Dick was one of the brilliant young men of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. In his thirties, he both named and helped design Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and was a speechwriter and close advisor to Robert Kennedy. Doris Kearns was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student when selected as a White House Fellow. She worked directly for Lyndon Johnson and later assisted on his memoir.
Over the years, with humor, anger, frustration, and in the end, a growing understanding, Dick and Doris had argued over the achievements and failings of the leaders they served and observed, debating the progress and unfinished promises of the country they both loved.
The Goodwins’ last great adventure involved finally opening the more than three hundred 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, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference; a time, like today, marked by struggles for racial and economic justice, a time when lines were drawn and loyalties tested.
Their expedition gave Dick’s last years renewed purpose and determination. The voyage of remembrance brought unexpected discoveries, forgiveness, and the renewal of old dreams, reviving the hope that the youth of today will carry forward this unfinished love story with America.

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s work for President Johnson launched her career as a presidential historian. She is the author of "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream", the Pulitzer Prize-winning "No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt", the Lincoln Prize-winning "Team of Rivals," the Carnegie Medal-winning "The Bully Pulpit," and "Leadership: In Turbulent Times."
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Special thanks to our Writers on a New England Stage Partner, New Hampshire Public Radio, our Presenting Sponsor the University of New Hampshire, and our Media Partner, Yankee Magazine.