Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) April 16, 2024: The loquacious American historian and notorious plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin (born in 1943; Ph.D. in government, Harvard University, 1968; married Richard N. Goodwin [1931-2018] in 1975) is the author of the celebrated 2005 book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster).
Dr. Doris Kearns Goodwin's new 2024 book is titled An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s (Simon & Schuster). In it, she weaves together a memoir of her own life, a biography of her late husband's life, and a history of the 1960s.
Dr. Doris Kearns Goodwin spoke with the New York Times real estate reporter Joanne Kaufman about her new book. See Kaufman's article "A Historian Makes Peace With Her Own History: It took Doris Kearns Goodwin a while to adjust to leaving the Concord, Mass., she shared with her husband. But Boston has its compensations" (dated April 9, 2024) in the real estate section of the New York Times:
Kaufman says, "Ms. Kearn Goodwin's primary sources [for her new 2024 book] were the 300 (and counting) boxes of letters, postcards, documents, diaries, newspaper clippings, photos, and other ephemera that Dick Goodwin amassed during the middle years of the 20th century, unceremoniously shoved into storage unity, basements, and a barn, and then, more than 50 years later, retrieved cache by cache and shared with his eager wife."
According to Kaufman, Richard N. Goodwin "in his 20s, was a special assistant to President John F. Kennedy and forged an enduring friendship with Jackie Kennedy and in his 30s, was a speechwriter and advisor for President Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy."
"Mr. Goodwin's plans to chronicle those turbulent times" were cut short by his death in 2018. However, "after his death, Ms. Kearns Goodwin took up the project."
Now, many OEN readers are too young to remember the 1960s. But those younger readers should remember that President Joe Biden was born in 1942 and former President Donald Trump was born in 1946. So Biden turned 18 in 1960, and Trump turned 14 in 1916. So Biden was 18 to 27 during the 1960s, and Trump was 14 to 23.
Dr. Doris Kearns Goodwin was 17 to 26 in the 1960s. But Richard N. Goodwin was 29 to 38, and he gathered the archive of materials about the 1960s that Dr. Doris Kearns Goodwin used in writing her personal history of the 1960s.
I was 16 to 25. And I was impressionable. Even though President Biden and I were born a wee bit too early in the 1940s to be included in the Baby Boom generation that was born after World War II officially ended in 1945, we grew up alongside the Baby Boomers - one of whom was former President Trump.
We should not forget that President Harry S. Truman had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to bring World War II to an end in 1945. As a result, in postwar America, all Americans lived under the totally terrifying threat of possible atomic warfare.
Christopher Nolan wrote and directed the award-winning 2023 film Oppenheimer - starring the Irish actor Cillian Murphy as the cigarette-smoking physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who is often described as the father of the atomic bomb. Nolan based his film script on the aptly titled 2005 book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martic J. Sherwin (Alfred A. Knopf).
According to their 2005 book (p. 575), President Kennedy had planned to confer the Enrico Fermi Prize on J. Robert Oppenheimer in a ceremony in the White House on December 2, 1963 - which President Kennedy was unable to do because he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963 - most likely by the CIA.
Instead, "On December 2, President Lyndon Johnson went ahead with the fermi Award ceremony, as scheduled" (p. 576).
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