An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s
The #1 New York Times bestseller from “America’s historian-in-chief” (New York magazine).
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s most beloved historians, artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life.
Dick and Doris Goodwin were married for forty-two years and married to American history even longer. In his twenties, Dick was one of the brilliant young men of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. In his thirties he both named and helped design Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and was a speechwriter and close advisor to Robert Kennedy. Doris Kearns was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student when selected as a White House Fellow. She worked directly for Lyndon Johnson and later assisted on his memoir.
Over the years, with humor, anger, frustration, and in the end, a growing understanding, Dick and Doris had argued over the achievements and failings of the leaders they served and observed, debating the progress and unfinished promises of the country they both loved.
The Goodwins’ last great adventure involved finally opening the more than three hundred boxes of letters, diaries, documents, and memorabilia that Dick had saved for more than fifty years. They soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference; a time, like today, marked by struggles for racial and economic justice, a time when lines were drawn and loyalties tested.
Their expedition gave Dick’s last years renewed purpose and determination. It gave Doris the opportunity to connect and reconnect with participants and witnesses of pivotal moments of the 1960s. And it gave them both an opportunity to make fresh assessments of the central figures of the time—John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and especially Lyndon Johnson, who greatly impacted both their lives. The voyage of remembrance brought unexpected discoveries, forgiveness, and the renewal of old dreams, reviving the hope that the youth of today will carry forward this unfinished love story with America.
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s most beloved historians, artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life.
Dick and Doris Goodwin were married for forty-two years and married to American history even longer. In his twenties, Dick was one of the brilliant young men of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. In his thirties he both named and helped design Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and was a speechwriter and close advisor to Robert Kennedy. Doris Kearns was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student when selected as a White House Fellow. She worked directly for Lyndon Johnson and later assisted on his memoir.
Over the years, with humor, anger, frustration, and in the end, a growing understanding, Dick and Doris had argued over the achievements and failings of the leaders they served and observed, debating the progress and unfinished promises of the country they both loved.
The Goodwins’ last great adventure involved finally opening the more than three hundred boxes of letters, diaries, documents, and memorabilia that Dick had saved for more than fifty years. They soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference; a time, like today, marked by struggles for racial and economic justice, a time when lines were drawn and loyalties tested.
Their expedition gave Dick’s last years renewed purpose and determination. It gave Doris the opportunity to connect and reconnect with participants and witnesses of pivotal moments of the 1960s. And it gave them both an opportunity to make fresh assessments of the central figures of the time—John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and especially Lyndon Johnson, who greatly impacted both their lives. The voyage of remembrance brought unexpected discoveries, forgiveness, and the renewal of old dreams, reviving the hope that the youth of today will carry forward this unfinished love story with America.
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Community Reviews
I’ll be honest—I had expected the alternation between memoir and history to feel forced, and probably to do a disservice to one or the other. But it really doesn’t suffer in either of those ways. In moments it does read like a straightforward historical account of American politics in the 1960s, and in others like a personal reflection on political aspiration and the struggle to accomplish something meaningful. Most often, the two are indistinguishable, fully woven together. What makes the book so effective is precisely that combination: the history is richer for being told through the lens of lived experience, and the memoir gains depth through its ties to the momentous decisions and events of the era.
I don’t normally have much patience for memoirs of well-known figures; they’re typically overly polished and full of self-regard. This one avoids that, partly because the author does not separate her and her husband’s personal lives from the larger history that they inhabited. The “behind the scenes” details of policymaking and political struggles come not as detached analysis, but as lived realities.
If there was a part that didn’t quite land for me, it was the framing device of them working through the archival boxes. I suppose it was necessary to structure the narrative, but I didn’t care nearly as much about it as I did the stories that emerged from those papers. It’s not enough to make me dislike the book, but it did occasionally jar me out of it.
Imagine walking into a history lecture, realizing there’s no way out, and then slowly sinking into your chair as the professor drones on. That’s a little bit what this book felt like. Goodwin is an incredible historian, but this one could’ve used a serious haircut—maybe a tight fade and a little off the top? 💈The narration didn’t help, and the title didn’t quite land (unless it was about her near canonization of LBJ). If history is your thing, you might appreciate it, but for casual readers, there are livelier options.
I enthusiastically recommend this in its audio book format, which is read by the author and laced with actual recordings of Kennedy, Johnson and others. Dick Goodwin’s remarkable archive (300 boxes!) of letters, memos, memorabilia give readers a peek at the front row seat of our history in the making he had during his nearly 3 decades of public service. Naturally Doris’s writing elegantly tells the story. It also reminds me of the unfortunate side effect of our era of electronic communication- we don’t write many (much less save in ribbon tied packets) letters or collect and save paper records anymore. This book underscores the value of such practices….especially if you’re married to Doris Kearns Goodwin :)
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