An Unfinished Love Story

 

An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin 480 pp.

This book was fascinating to me since, while I remembered the major events of the 1960s, I was a child during that time (the assassination of JFK happened when I was in kindergarten). I have read other books by Doris Kearns Goodwin but was not familiar with her husband, Richard Goodwin, a man who was so instrumental in the world of Democratic politics in the 1960s. When her husband reached his 80s the two of them began go through his stored files of his work and memorabilia of his days in Washington as a  clerk for Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Then as counsel for the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce where he investigated the television quiz show scandals of the 1950s. (Goodwin was portrayed by actor Rob Morrow in the 1994 film "Quiz Show.") After that he became one of the speechwriters and advisors for Senator John Kennedy during his campaign for the Presidency. Kennedy appointed him Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs where he tried to discourage Kennedy from ordering the Bay of Pigs operation. Goodwin aided the First Lady in many tasks most notably in the relocating of Egyptian temples that would have been flooded by the Aswan Dam project. He was also instrumental in the planning of the dinner for Nobel Prize winners (Dinner in Camelot) and finally arranging for the eternal flame Jackie Kennedy requested for her husband's grave. Following Kennedy's death Goodwin became Secretary General of the Peace Corp until he accepted a job with President Lyndon Johnson where he was credited with writing some of LBJ's most important and effective speeches before resigning because of differences over the Vietnam War. After some work in academia, Goodwin, ever against the war in Vietnam, joined Eugene McCarthy's campaign for President leaving when his friend Bobby Kennedy decided to run after LBJ announced he would not seek re-election. Upon Kennedy's assassination in Los Angeles, Goodwin went back to the McCarthy campaign. Following those years he taught and wrote, producing articles, books, and a play. He married Doris Kearns, who had worked with LBJ on his memoir, in 1975 and they were married until his death in 2018. I learned so much from this book. I never knew that LBJ pushed the Fair Housing Bill through Congress on the heels of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination or how much friction existed between LBJ and Bobby Kennedy. And I didn't know anything about the man, Richard (Dick) Goodwin. I listened to the audiobook, read by the author.

The Bully Pulpit

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin  910 pp.

I will admit right here that if I tried to read the physical book instead of the audiobook, read by actor Edward Herrmann, I never would have finished it. It is interesting and I learned a lot about the Progressive era of American politics at the turn of the 20th century. Part of the incentive to read it is the Pulitzer Prize winning author whose meticulous research and balanced view of events is evidenced in all her books. The stories of Teddy Roosevelt's and W.H. Taft's friendship and the rise in their careers is well told, with much I never heard before. The rupture of the friendship during the brutal 1912 Presidential campaign shows a side of Roosevelt not usually depicted in biographies. Added to the stories of these larger than life men is a chronicle of the rise of investigative journalism, the muckrakers, and its effect on the politics of the time. The focus on publisher S.S. McClure and his exemplary fleet of writers which included Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Alan White. If this tome does nothing else, it shows that history indeed repeats itself and the political battles of the early 1900s are very similar to what is happening today.