News from campus and beyond

Author Doris Kearns Goodwin to talk about newest book

Doris Kearns Goodwin


Last updated April 2, 2014

By News administrator

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin

The American History Book Club (AHBC) will host Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin in Greenville, Thursday, April 10 in a first-ever fundraising effort by the Book Club to advance the Upcountry’s appreciation for American history.

Goodwin’s talk, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, is based on her latest book of the same name and will begin at 7 p.m. in the Poinsett Club.

Presented by the AHBC, the event is open only to members of the Upcountry History Museum-Furman University (memberships are $35 per year for individuals and $65 for families).

Tickets for the Goodwin talk are $75 per person, which includes dinner. There will also be a V.I.P. reception at 5:30 p.m. with the author, which is an additional $100 per person.

Proceeds from the event will provide initial funding for the AHBC’s Scholars Fund, which will provide support for Furman students engaged in internships or research in history, and for area high school teachers to support their teaching and research in Southern history.

The Scholars Fund honors A.V. and Kate Huff.  Dr. A.V. Huff, Professor Emeritus of History and former Dean of the Faculty at Furman, is author of Greenville: The History of the City and County in South Carolina Piedmont.  His wife, Kate, is a retired first grade school teacher.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, a world-renowned presidential historian, is author of six critically acclaimed and New York Times best-selling books.  Her most recent book, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (2013), is a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era in America.  Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios has acquired the film rights to the book.

Spielberg and Goodwin also worked together on the movie “Lincoln,” which was based in part on Goodwin’s award-winning Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

Goodwin’s book, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, was awarded the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in history. Her other bestselling books include Wait Till Next Year, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, and The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, which was adapted into an award-winning five-part TV miniseries.

In addition to frequent appearances on the major television networks, Goodwin has appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” and “The Colbert Report.”  She has also served as a consultant and has been interviewed extensively for PBS and the History Channel’s documentaries on LBJ, the Kennedy family, Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham and Mary Lincoln, and Ken Burns’ “Baseball” and “The Civil War.”

Ms. Goodwin earned a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, where she taught Government, including a course on the American Presidency. She served as an assistant to President Lyndon Johnson in his last year in the White House, and later assisted President Johnson in the preparation of his memoirs.

For more information about Goodwin’s talk or becoming a member of the Upcountry History Museum, contact Elizabeth McSherry at 864-467-3100 or elizabeth@upcountryhistory.org.

Contact Us
Clinton Colmenares
Director of News and Media Strategy