“There was a buzz of excitement when I arrived at my Harvard office on a June morning in 1972. Richard “Dick” Goodwin had just taken an office on the third floor. We all knew who he was: He had worked in John Kennedy’s White House in his twenties, served as Lyndon Johnson’s chief speechwriter during the heyday of the Great Society, and been in California with Robert Kennedy when he died. An acquaintance who knew him said he was the most brilliant, interesting man she had ever met. “
Those are some lines from the Introduction to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s. You probably know Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize for her book on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. She has also written books on Presidents Johnson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Taft. Her books are well researched and incredibly well written. You may not know that, for 42 years, she was married to Dick Goodwin, a famous presidential speechwriter. The idea for this book surfaced as Doris and Dick combed through his 300+ boxes of letters, diaries, documents and memorabilia.
As the book jacket says, “They soon realized that they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s.” The book is an inside look into what it was like to work alongside John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bobby Kennedy. Dick was at the White House when Kennedy’s body was brought home and at the Democratic Convention six years later when riots broke out over Vietnam. Some of his experiences and speeches along the way are documented in a very readable format in this book.
If you’re interested in reading about the presidency in the 1960s, then you must read An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
