Online Event
April 7, 2022
Noon CST (1:00 p.m. EST)
Please join the Briscoe Center for American History for a one-of-a-kind conversation between renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin and Dr. Don Carleton, executive director of the Briscoe Center for American History. Goodwin will share her insights on why history matters and her contributions to keeping it alive and relevant today.
About the Program:
Doris Kearns Goodwin is a renowned presidential historian, Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times #1 best-selling author and co-founder of the film and television production company Pastimes Productions. The author of seven critically acclaimed and bestselling books, including No Ordinary Time, Team of Rivals, and The Bully Pulpit. Her most recent title, Leadership: In Turbulent Times, incorporates her five decades of scholarship studying Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson.
At the heart of Ms. Goodwin’s work is her interest in bringing history alive through telling stories and providing examples of presidents whose leadership made a difference in our country. In this one-of-a-kind conversation, Ms. Goodwin reflects upon the importance of primary source material to her work and how the way in which she has thought and written about some of the most important figures in our nation’s history has yielded uniquely illuminating results. “Through newspapers and letters, diaries and first-hand accounts of participants, piece by piece and detail by detail, I try to reconstruct in my imagination their real world,” she notes. From asking the right questions to gathering essential details, she shares her excitement for the past, and how it informs our present and can guide our future, offering a sense of solace and perspective as we live today through our own cascading series of challenges.
The online event is free. To register, please email briscoecenterevents@austin.utexas.edu. A link will be emailed to you prior to the event.
About Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Ms. Goodwin’s career as a presidential historian and author was inspired when, as a 24-year-old graduate student at Harvard, she was selected to join the White House Fellows, one of America’s most prestigious programs for leadership and public service. Doris worked with President Lyndon Johnson in the White House and later assisted him in the writing of his memoirs. Her half-century career of studying and illuminating U.S. presidents has earned her numerous awards.
Her first book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, became a national bestseller and achieved critical acclaim. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. Her bestselling book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys was adapted into an award-winning five-part television miniseries. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism was awarded the Carnegie Medal.
Ms. Goodwin earned the Lincoln Prize for Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which provided the basis for Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award-winning film “Lincoln,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis in an Academy Award-winning performance. She was the first historian to receive the Lincoln Leadership Prize from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation. Her latest bestselling book, Leadership: In Turbulent Times, was an instant bestseller and is the basis for HISTORY’s miniseries on Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
Well known for her appearances in documentaries and on news and cable networks, Ms. Goodwin is frequently called upon to put current-day events into historical perspective. Her critically acclaimed three-hour MasterClass on U.S. History and Leadership is a fan favorite. She played herself as Lisa Simpson’s teacher on The Simpsons and on American Horror Story. Ms. Goodwin graduated magna cum laude from Colby College. She earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Government from Harvard University, where she taught Government, including a course on the American Presidency.
