On the Town: Historian Doris Goodwin shares presidential lessons at OU

Noted historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has spent her career as a historian deep in the stories about U.S. presidents their leadership, their personal lives, the events that shaped them and how they shaped our country.

Speaking at the University of Oklahoma on Thursday night as part of the Presidential Speakers Series, Goodwin focused on the lessons we can learn from the past.

“I believe that history can provide us with perspective, with lessons, with solace and with hope,” Goodwin told the overflow crowd as she talked about her love of history and stories. “We can learn so much from history by looking at the past times that we lived through.”

She added that the people living through these times didn’t know how their stories were going to turn out, she said. They didn’t know the Allies were going to win World War II, that Civil War would end slavery would end and reunite the United States, etc. People had the same anxieties that we have now.

“We really feel like we're living through a very rough time now, and it isn't truly rough. But on the other hand, we've lived through even rougher times,” Goodwin said.

The dinner event was so popular that OU filled rooms throughout the Oklahoma Memorial Union to accommodate everyone interested in hearing Kearns speak. Other rooms watched a simulcast on television screens as she talked about lessons from Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson and how they’re relevant to today.

Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and bestselling author of books like “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s” (2024) and “Leadership in Turbulent Times” (2018), both on sale at the event. She signed copies, too.

Also on sale was her new book out this week, “The Leadership Journey: How Four Kids Became President,” out this week, featuring the stories of Lincoln, both Roosevelts and Johnson adapted for middle school aged students.

Goodwin talked about President Johnson bringing her on board at the White House to write his memoirs.

“Everywhere we went, he just talked. He never stopped talking. He would talk when we were swimming in the pool He talked as we waited in the movie theater I listened and I listened, and I like to think that that was why he spent so many hours with me, that I loved listening to his stories,” Goodwin said.

She added that her visits with Johnson inspired her to want to understand presidential history.

“The older I've gotten, the more I realized what an extraordinary privilege it was to have spent so many hours with this aging line of a man (Johnson) who had mishandled the war in Vietnam, but who had accomplished an extraordinary amount in domestic politics,” Goodwin said.

Her visits with Johnson developed in her the drive to understand the inner people beyond the public figures, which included not judging them until she understood the context in which they ruled.

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