Doris Kearns was an assistant professor of history at Harvard University in 1972, teaching a class on the American presidency and starting the book that would mark the start of her extraordinary career as a popular historian, “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream,” when Richard N. Goodwin walked into her office.A legendary speechwriter for presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, Goodwin flopped himself down, she recalled, and asked, “Hi, are you a graduate student?”“So I earnestly told him all about the presidency class I was teaching, and then quickly realized he was just teasing me,” she said. “We had dinner that night and engaged in conversation about L.B.J., J.F.K., the Red Sox and the ’60s. And I floated home that evening and told two close friends that I had met the man I wanted to marry.”Image
Doris Kearns married Goodwin on Dec. 14, 1975. Among those who attended were Boston Mayor Kevin H. White, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Norman Mailer, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and Hunter Thompson.Credit...Photo by Marc Peloquin. Courtesy of Doris Kearns GoodwinDick-and-Doris, as they were colloquially known, as if a single entity, married in 1975, raised three boys and dedicated themselves to work that made them luminaries in their fields. He wrote about politics and society; she became the United States’ premier presidential historian on the strength of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “No Ordinary Time,” (1994) about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and six other best sellers.For decades, the couple kept their archives, including more than 300 boxes of diaries, letters, scrapbooks, memos and speech drafts that Goodwin had saved, especially from his White House days in the 1960s, stored in the two-story barn on their Concord, Mass., property.When he died in 2018, Kearns Goodwin sought an appropriate home for his papers: Spanning 1950 to 2014, they offer unique insight into 1960s policies and debates, and are a comprehensive record of Goodwin’s professional career. On Thursday, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas in Austin announced the acquisition of the Goodwin papers for $5 million, with Kearns Goodwin’s own archive donated to live alongside her husband’s.Secret Letters Throughout History
For centuries, people have exchanged information in writing. Science is now casting new light on what was once meant to be private.
Cracking the CaseA letter Charles Dickens wrote in a mystifying shorthand style went unread for over a century. Computer programmers recently decoded it.UncensoredUsing an X-ray technique, scientists have revealed the content of redacted letters between Marie Antoinette and Count von Fersen, her rumored lover.Original Encryption: To safeguard their missives against snoops, writers through the ages have employed a complicated means of security: letterlocking.Breaking the SealTo read the “locked” letters without tearing them apart, researchers have turned to virtual reality.“When I saw how Dick saved everything from his lengthy and notable career, I was blown away,” said Don Carleton, the executive director of the Briscoe Center. “But I also told Doris that it should be a package deal. Doris is a hugely important cultural figure. Her own archive is valuable for scholars studying Lincoln, the Roosevelts, J.F.K., L.B.J. and so much more. I thought they belonged together, in the same building.”What impressed Kearns Goodwin, in turn, was that the Briscoe Center sponsors and facilitates original research projects based on its archival holdings. “I was gratified that Dick’s papers wouldn’t lie dormant at Briscoe in a vault,” she said.ImageThe first page of Goodwin’s draft of President Johnson’s “Great Society”By: Douglas Brinkley
Title: U.T. Austin Acquires Archives That Give Insight Into the 1960s
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/books/kearns-goodwin-archive-ut-austin.html
Published Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2022 09:00:21 +0000
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