Standalone Novels In Publication Order
- Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1976)
- The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (1987)
- No Ordinary Time (1994)
- Wait Till Next Year (1997)
- Team of Rivals (2005)
- The Bully Pulpit (2013)
- Leadership: In Turbulent Times (2018)
Standalone Novels Book Covers
Doris Kearns Goodwin Books Overview
The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys
In its drama and scope, this number one bestseller about two families whose ambitions propelled them to unprecedented power and whose passions nearly destroyed them is one of the richest works of biography in the last decade. ‘Rarely has popular history rung so authentic.’ The New York Times. First time in trade paper. Photographs.
Wait Till Next Year
Wait Till Next Yearis the story of a young girl growing up in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, when owning a single family home on a tree lined street meant the realization of dreams, when everyone knew everyone else on the block, and the children gathered in the streets to play from sunup to sundown. The neighborhood was equally divided among Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans, and the corner stores were the scenes of fierce and affectionate rivalries. We meet the people who influenced Goodwin’s early life: her father, who emerged from a traumatic childhood without a trace of self pity or rancor and who taught his daughter early on that she should say whatever she thought and should bring her voice into any conversation at any time; her mother, whose heart problems left her with the arteries of a seventy year old when she was only in her thirties and whose love of books allowed her to break the boundaries of the narrow world to which she was confined by her chronic illness; her two older sisters; her friends on the block; the local storekeepers; her school friends and teachers. This is also the story of a girlhood in which the great religious festivals of the Catholic church and the seasonal imperatives of baseball combined to produce a passionate love of history, ceremony, and ritual. It is the story of growing up in what seemed on the surface a more innocent era until one recalls the terror of polio, the paranoia of McCarthyism reflected even in the children’s games, the obsession with A bomb drills in school, and the ugly face of racial prejudice. It was a time whose relative tranquillity contained the seeds of the turbulent decade of the sixties.
Team of Rivals
Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln’s political genius in this highly original work, as the one term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president. On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry. Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires. It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war. We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through. This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln’s mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation’s history.