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January 24, 2000
Renowned Author Doris Kearns Goodwin to Speak at Princeton
Princeton, NJ -- Renowned author and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin will give a talk titled "A Journey through the Century: Reflections of a Biographer and Historian" at Princeton University on Tuesday, February 8, at 3:00 p.m. in McCosh 50.
Kearns is the author of Lyndon Johnson & The American Dream, which was described in 1976 as "the most penetrating political biography" the reviewer had ever read. Goodwin had worked as an assistant to President Johnson during his last year in the White House and later assisted him in preparing his memoirs. Her next book, The Fitzgeralds & The Kennedys, spent five months on the New York Times bestseller list and was made into a six-hour miniseries for ABC in 1990. This was followed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Home Front During World War II, which also won the Harold Washington Literary Award, the New England Bookseller Association Award, the Ambassador Book Award, and The Washington Monthly Book Award. She followed her political biographies with 1997's Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir, which drew upon her girlhood love of the Brooklyn Dodgers. A reviewer for the Washington Post called it "a book in the grand tradition of girlhood memoirs, dating from Louisa May Alcott to Carson McCullers and Harper Lee."
She has written numerous articles on politics and baseball for leading national publications, and is a regular panelist on PBS's "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" and for NBC news. She has been a consultant and on-air person for PBS documentaries on LBJ, the Kennedy family, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ken Burns' "The History of Baseball." She is the winner of the Charles Frankel Prize given by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Sara Josepha Hale medal.
Kearns' lecture is the second in a series to be presented as part of the Princeton Millennium Project of the Class of 2000. Former president of Poland Lech Walesa, who spoke at Princeton in October, was the first speaker in the series; a talk by author Toni Morrison is planned for April. The project also includes essay contests for Princeton undergraduates and area high school students; an archival project, "A Week in the Life of Princeton, 2000"; and a Millennium Day. The lecture is cosponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School.