A Promise Kept
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
Reviewed by Dana Dickson
The idea for this book began when famous historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 80-year-old husband asked her to help him comb through his more than 300 boxes of memorabilia and translate their significance into book format. Even for someone with Goodwin’s skills in research and storytelling, this was a tall order.
For starters, these weren’t just any old boxes: they contained things like draft speeches with notations in the handwriting of former U.S. presidents. Today, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s reputation has arguably eclipsed that of her husband, in large part due to having won the Pulitzer Prize and having written the biography of Abraham Lincoln that Stephen Spielberg adapted into his 2012 film Lincoln. So, it may surprise many readers to learn that when they first met, Doris Kearns was an unknown, and Dick Goodwin, the man who would become her husband, was a well-connected and controversial intellectual adventurer who had already moved on from a career as an advisor and speech writer for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Because Dick’s own path repeatedly intersected with that of key historical figures at very important moments, this book would be bigger in scope than just the story of a single man. Doris embraced the challenge and seemed bent on proving the truth of a Thomas Mann quote she included in the book: “a human being lives out not only his personal life as an individual, but also . . . the lives of his epoch and his contemporaries.”
But there were bigger challenges to this project that neither Doris nor Dick were aware of when they committed to working on the book together. Firstly, though he seemed healthy enough at the time, Dick only had six years left to live. In fact, they would not complete the book before he died of cancer. Doris had to finish it alone. Secondly, sorting through the boxes and discussing their contents would force Dick to confront and make peace with his unresolved feelings about his younger self, broken relationships, and disappointments.
The result is a book that spans genres. One might reasonably ask whether this is the story of an enduring romantic partnership or a peek behind the scenes by a pair of former political insiders or a memoir or a history book. Those kinds of questions might naturally arise, but they are not really helpful in this context. This book won’t easily accommodate such categorizations, and it isn’t really trying to. Above all, its mission is to fulfil the promise that Doris made to Dick.
In some ways, the book is ambitious and challenging: the cast of characters is as big as in a thick Russian novel, the events span decades, alliances shift, and values are explored, all against the backdrop of reconciling oneself to mortality. In another way, the book is simple: as the title suggests, it is all about love. There is the love between Dick and Doris, the love each had for the imperfect leaders they were attached to, a love for libraries and writing and family, and a love for a different, more hopeful era in American politics.
We follow Dick from his early college days into Harvard Law School. After supporting himself by selling brushes door-to-door and working as a late-night fry cook, Dick studies his way to the top of his class and onto the Harvard Law Review. Then comes an abrupt twist: one day, he walks out of the law library and enlists in the U.S. Army. He is sent to Angoulême, France, which Doris describes as “the most informal and friendly post in Europe.” There he lectures troops and takes advantage of generous furloughs to travel. Since Doris only met her husband when he was in his forties, she takes particular delight in exploring the materials from his youth and getting acquainted with Dick as a young man. She falls in love all over again, but Dick sums up his feelings about this stranger from the past as envy: “He’s got something I’ve lost along the way.”
After almost two years in the Army, when Dick returns to the U.S. in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, he sees his homeland through new eyes and discovers a lifelong mission to, as Doris puts it, “close the gap between our national ideals and the reality of our daily lives.” She views her husband’s mission as a modern parallel to Abraham Lincoln’s belief in “the right of any man to rise to the level of his industry and talents.”
From this point forward, the momentum picks up. Dick instigates an investigation into discriminatory practices on college campuses before graduating from law school and clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who later correctly diagnoses Dick with “politics in the blood.” Turning down myriad offers from big law firms, Dick continues in public service by accepting a position with the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight. Only ten days into his new job, he recommends that the Subcommittee investigate quiz shows accused of feeding questions and answers to contestants prior to taping. They uncover the scandal that formed the basis for Robert Redford’s film Quiz Show.
When Time Magazine publishes Dick’s article about the investigation, he achieves a certain degree of fame/notoriety. Despite all this, he recalls the experience with disappointment: the investigation only went after the little guys and never held the big actors (the networks and sponsors) accountable. Eventually, Dick accepts a position as a junior speech writer for JFK’s presidential campaign and continues working for JFK during his term as president.
Among other things, Dick is involved with development of the Alliance for Progress (a reset of American policy towards Latin America), the Peace Corps, the 1962 dinner in honor of Nobel Prize winners, and the fundraising campaign to save the Temples of Abu Simbel (in exchange, the Egyptian government “gave” the U.S. government the Temple of Dendur, now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art). In the wake of JFK’s assassination, Dick is tasked with getting the eternal flame ready for Jackie Kennedy to light at the gravesite.
Soon, LBJ recruits Dick as a strategist and chief speech writer. One of the great pleasures of this part of the book is savoring LBJ’s colorful language. The Goodwins learn from a recorded phone call exactly how LBJ negotiated for Dick’s transfer onto the White House staff and a little increase in pay: “if you can find a way to give him a $50 raise, I’d like to do it if I have to steal it from my mother-in-law.” Audiobook listeners get to hear LBJ delivering these lines along with multiple other excerpts from speeches and recorded calls in addition to excerpts from JFK’s speeches and Bobby Kennedy’s speeches, Bryan Cranston reading Dick’s letters, and Doris narrating everything else.
Although LBJ and JFK have very different styles, Dick adapts his writing so well that LBJ excitedly tells him “You’re going to be my voice, my alter ego.” Indeed, Dick helps to write some of LBJ’s key speeches (the Great Society speech, the We Shall Overcome speech, etc.). Their relationship is hot-and-cold, but their partnership is fruitful: LBJ guides the Civil Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, and the Voting Rights Act through to passage while Dick works closely with him.
After an acrimonious split with LBJ, Dick tries to escape politics by accepting a fellowship at Wesleyan. But not long after Dick’s flight from the White House (it turns out Justice Frankfurter was right) Dick’s friendship with Bobby Kennedy evolves into speech writing for him, including the famous Ripples of Hope speech. When Dick personally speaks out against the Vietnam War, he becomes the first former member of the Johnson administration to do so. One of the most painful years to relive is 1968, when Dick works for both Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy and suffers repeated heartbreak. He is with Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles just a few hours before Kennedy’s assassination and finds himself facing down police who have violently attacked McCarthy’s volunteers in the chaos of the 1968 Democratic Convention.
Along the way, Dick crosses paths with a wide array of iconic historical figures from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Che Guevara. Some of these interactions are dazzling and life-changing, some are major mistakes, and some are all of the above. To the Goodwins’ credit, we do see Dick’s missteps as well as his successes.
In the retelling, we also follow Doris along the track of many digressions. She weaves in some of her own stories (especially about LBJ and his family) or takes off to interview minor characters from Dick’s past that pique her interest. For readers in the Holden Caulfield camp (“I like it when somebody digresses”), those detours are pleasurable and enhance the overall narrative.
Often, glimpses of the Goodwins’ homelife and relationship are just as engaging as the larger narrative. As they pore over Dick’s draft speeches for Kennedy, they can’t help arguing over the relative merits of JFK v. LBJ (although Dick worked for both presidents, his greatest loyalty was always to JFK while Doris interned for LBJ, grew close to him and his family by helping him write his memoir, and published her own first book on LBJ). In their 70s and 80s, they have a “debate date” after opening the boxes dedicated to Dick’s preparation of JFK for his debates against Nixon. The Goodwins rewatch each debate on YouTube while sharing a bottle of wine and assessing the candidates’ performances.
Over time, their ongoing dialogue about the materials in the boxes works a kind of magic. Doris comes to appreciate the power that Kennedy had to inspire others to work towards change (even if she remains a little unimpressed by his ability to make good on his many campaign promises). Dick is surprised to find the project “softening the bitterness towards Johnson that had festered within him for so many years, allowing him to remember Lyndon with admiration and even, . . . God help me, with affection.” Dick “felt better not only about Lyndon but about his 85-year-old self and what they had both contributed to the country they so loved.” Meanwhile, Doris’s own “appreciation for JFK had grown.”
However, their book project is soon overshadowed by Dick’s cancer diagnosis. Although they continue to sort through his boxes and discuss key writings like the concession speech Dick drafted for Al Gore, the pace necessarily slows, and, after so much looking back, their attention shifts to the immediate moment. Dick asks her to read him Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality, and he repeats to her from memory “Though nothing can bring back the hour/ Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;/ We will grieve not, rather find/ Strength in what remains behind.” It is both an intimate moment and a succinct summary of what Doris is doing in this book. She takes us faithfully through Dick’s final days and beyond, showing how the writing of the book helped her to navigate the grief she felt after his loss.
In the end, Doris pulls off a complicated balancing act. While the book is a kind of therapeutic exercise for Doris that revolves around and memorializes Dick, it still manages to accomplish her original, ambitious goals by fulfilling her promise to her husband and telling a story that is as much about his era and his contemporaries as it is about him.
Dana Dickson is an award-winning trademark attorney and lover of books based in Alexandria, Virginia. Her writing on legal issues has appeared in the American Bar Association’s Landslide Magazine and The Trademark Lawyer Magazine. Her website is DanaDicksonLaw.com
