Front-Row Seat in 1960s Movements For Change: Doris Kearns and Husband Dick Goodwin

What’s most striking about Doris Kearns Goodwin’s memoir of the 1960s, “An Unfinished Love Story,” about both herself and her husband Richard Goodwin, as well as an entire generation that came of age in the early to mid 1960s, was their enthusiastic idealism, confidence, and belief that they could make a difference in the world, eliminate racial discrimination and poverty in the U.S.

Inspired by JFK’s articulation of a New Frontier and LBJ’s vision of a Great Society, they certainly made a big dent, with the success of the civil rights movement in ending Jim Crow segregation, establishing Medicare and so many other programs, especially the Peace Corps and VISTA.

She was a presidential scholar who became a confidante of President Johnson. NPR interview.

NYT: She wasn’t competing with her husband. He “was more interested in shaping history,” she says, “and I in figuring out how history was shaped.” Their bond is at the heart of her new book.

The book is also available as an audio, read by the author.

The book is certainly riveting, much loved by readers on Goodreads.com.

Dick Goodwin wrote many immortal words for John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Robert F. Kennedy. Among them these words from LBJ in 1964: