NEW YORK (AP) ā Doris Kearns Goodwin’s next book is a work of history that’s also close to home.
The Pulitzer Prize winner’s “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960sā is a reflection on her final years with her longtime husband, Richard Goodwin, the former White House speechwriter who died in 2018, and on the singular era they lived through.
Simon & Schuster announced Wednesday that the book will be released April 16. The publisher is calling it a combination of memoir, history and biography; Goodwin was inspired in part by the couple’s looking through hundreds of boxes of letters, diaries and other papers.
Richard Goodwin was a key aide to President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson who helped coin the phrase āThe Great Society.ā Doris Kearns was a White House Fellow who later helped Johnson work on his memoir, āThe Vantage Point.ā
She went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for āNo Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War IIā and write the bestselling āTeam of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,ā among other books.
āAmerica has been at odds with itself before. Iāve been drawn to such turbulent times — the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, World War II,” Goodwin said in a statement. “This is the story of one of those times, of my husband and myself, and our generation shaped by the cataclysms of the 1960s. We see what historic opportunities were seized, what chances were lost, what light those years cast upon our own fractured time. āThe end of our country has loomed many times before,ā my husband often reminded me, āAmerica is not as fragile as it seems.āā
Simon & Schuster’s statement reads in part: āOver the years, with humor, anger, frustration, and in the end, growing understanding, Dick and Doris had argued, questioned, and debated the achievements and the failings of the leaders they served and observed, debating the progress and unfinished promises of the country they both loved.ā
In reviewing their old papers, āThey soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the ’60s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference.”
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