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Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin

Daschle Dialogue Guest

Doris Kearns Goodwin, a world-renowned presidential historian, public speaker and Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times No. 1 best-selling author, was the featured guest for the 4th annual Daschle Dialogues series at South Dakota State University.

Goodwin’s seventh book, “Leadership: In Turbulent Times,” was published in September 2018 to critical acclaim and became an instant New York Times best-seller. A culmination of Goodwin’s five-decade career of studying the American presidents focusing on Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson, the book provides an accessible and essential road map for aspiring and established leaders in every field and for all of us in our everyday lives.

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. Goodwin worked with President Johnson in the White House and later assisted him in the writing of his memoirs.

She then wrote “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream,” which became a national best-seller and achieved critical acclaim. It will be re-released in March 2019, with a new foreword highlighting LBJ’s accomplishments in domestic affairs that have stood the test of time.

Goodwin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II.” “The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys” was adapted into an award-winning five-part television miniseries.

Her memoir, “Wait Till Next Year,” is the heartwarming story of growing up loving her family and baseball. Her sixth book, “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism,” won the Carnegie Medal and is being developed into a film.

Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” served as the basis for Steven Spielberg’s hit film, “Lincoln” and was awarded the prestigious Lincoln Prize, the inaugural Book Prize for American History and the Lincoln Leadership Prize.

“Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of the nation’s most pre-eminent authors and historians,” Daschle said. “I have long admired her and her work.”

“It is an incredible honor for South Dakota State University to host an author and presidential historian of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s caliber,” said SDSU President Barry H. Dunn. “We are deeply grateful to Senator Daschle for providing this enriching experience to our students, faculty and the state’s residents.”

Daschle’s previous guests were former Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and NBC broadcaster and author Tom Brokaw.