Chris’s Pick
July, 2025
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Audiobook, Narrated by the Author with Brian Cranston
Simon and Schuster 2024
Richard Goodwin, a presidential advisor and speechwriter to both John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, “was more interested in shaping history”, said his wife Doris Kearns Goodwin, “and I in figuring out how history was shaped.”
When Dick Goodwin turned eighty years old, he determined it was finally time to open the 300 boxes of papers and memorabilia he had saved from the 60’s, and he and Doris began to revisit the decade in chronological order, leading to the writing of this book.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is a renowned award-winning presidential historian, who has written biographies of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, John and Jacqueline Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Theodore Roosevelt.
This book, however, is very personal. We see the decade through the eyes of her husband, some 10 years her senior, who was the primary speechwriter and presidential aide to John Kennedy; became close friends with both Bobby and Jackie Kennedy; and advisor and speechwriter for Johnson after Kennedy’s death. He became a strong antiwar advocate towards the end of the decade, speaking out against Lyndon Johnson’s policies and leaving his cabinet, moving his support to McCarthy and then Bobby Kennedy as they bid for the White House. In counterpoint, Doris Kearns was asked by Johnson to help him write his presidential memoirs and she became a huge admirer of this president. Kennedy vs Johnson was an intellectual rift in their marriage for years.
The 60’s are largely remembered for the end of the decade, with the Vietnam war, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the riots and violence on college campuses. It was the beginning of America’s distrust in the government, (which then continued with Watergate, Nixon, the war in Afghanistan, up to the schism in the country today).
But extraordinary changes took place during the sixties that still determine America’s future. It is hard, I think, to now imagine a country without the social structure that these two presidents put into place. The Peace Corps, the expansion of Social Security to create Medicare and Medicaid, HeadStart, the Civil Rights act, the Voting Rights act, the Space Race. It also saw the nascent women’s movement come into being.
Kearns Goodwin and her husband witnessed all of this from “the room where it happened” which makes this book so remarkable. I have not seen the print copy of this book, which I imagine has a lot of wonderful photographs. But, by listening to it, we hear audio clips of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luthor King, Bobby Kennedy, and others who were part of this changing time. It felt exhilarating to hear the words that truly effected change.
For those of us who lived through and remember the tumultuous 1960’s decade, I think this book will resonate with you as much as it did with me. And, if you are too young to remember, then I suggest coming along with one of America’s great historians as she recounts the decade beginning with JFK’s “New Frontier” and continuing with Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”. It’s quite a ride.