Review: Doris Kearns Goodwin looks back on the ’60s—and the love of her life
Richard Goodwin and Doris Kearns Goodwin in 1975. (Wikimedia Commons)The journey of discovering love in one’s life is often described, oxymoronically, as “indescribable.” In its cleanest sense, love is a construct used to describe the various affections, devotions and willingness to support and sacrifice for another. In much more real terms, it is driven by the minutiae known only to one’s closest and dearest. The habits of a spouse, the quirks of a relative, the pride of a parent. And, as with all things, love runs a course—whether it be a moment or a lifetime, fleeting or forever.
In her latest book, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin presents something utterly unique about what it means to love and to grow in that love for someone else. Married to Richard “Dick” Goodwin (who died in 2018) for 42 years, Kearns Goodwin is at her best in sharing the story of Dick and, at the same time, offering personal vignettes and insights into the “American Century.”
The book centers on the couple’s project of going through Goodwin’s boxes of writings and memorabilia from his five-decade career in American politics; they soon realized that they had a unique history of the 1960s in the 300-plus boxes at hand.
Dick Goodwin was significantly involved in American political life well before he even met Doris Kearns (they married when he was 43 and she was 32). An Unfinished Love Story allows Kearns Goodwin to shine as a historian, presenting the historical facts she discovers about the life her late husband led. With each remembrance, it is clear that she is falling in love all over again.
The early life of Dick Goodwin reads like a Horatio Alger story. Born to a Jewish family in Boston in 1931, Goodwin graduated summa cum laude from Tufts University and attended Harvard Law School. At the top of his class and editor of the law review, Goodwin suddenly took a leave from Harvard and joined the U.S. Army. Returning to finish his law degree, he then clerked for Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
Goodwin went on to work for the U.S. House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, where he broke the 1958 scandal around the quiz show “Twenty-One.” At age 29, Goodwin joined the John F. Kennedy presidential campaign as a speechwriter, and then the Kennedy administration as assistant special counsel and a member of the Task Force on Latin American Affairs—eventually rising to deputy secretary of state (even attempting to negotiate the lifting of the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba through conversations with Che Guevara). Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described Goodwin at that time as the “supreme generalist.”
Following the Kennedy assassination, Goodwin went on to become special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson, drafting (alongside Bill Moyers) some of Johnson’s more important addresses. After political life, Goodwin served as an editor, author, speaker, playwright and professor.
This is all well documented in An Unfinished Love Story. What we get from Kearns Goodwin are the details that only a spouse of 42 years could deliver. The enthusiasm with which Goodwin approached life; his waking up as some sort of “eccentric rooster” each morning; his quirks and his foibles—all of which for a traditional biography would generally be much more difficult to track down.
For example, as the couple worked together through Goodwin’s memorabilia, he did everything he could to stall reviewing the boxes related to 1968—staving off the tragic memories of that year. He went so far as to read aloud Herman Melville’s The Piazza Tales, aptly including the line: “Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come.” Who else but Kearns Goodwin could provide such a detail?
Another example: the emotionally vulnerable and candid relationship Goodwin had with Jackie Kennedy. In the period after her husband’s assassination, Jackie Kennedy wrote these deeply moving and revealing letters to Goodwin, including such lines as “you are the only person I even want to tell that to—as you are kind of a lost soul too.” Now, any historian could have come across this letter, but only Kearns Goodwin can tell you what effect this had on Dick Goodwin for years to come—and the complications it caused.
A final example draws out more of the humor that so often punctuated Goodwin’s life. Kearns Goodwin discovered a telegram, seemingly from Che Guevara to Goodwin, wishing him good luck on a specific occasion. “Arthur Schlesinger!” replied Dick, immediately recognizing a decades-old joke of Schlesinger posing as Guevara.
These little moments throughout the book shift the dynamic around loving someone else. Almost always upon the death of a loved one, the love does not end, but it certainly changes. You miss certain things more. You grow in appreciation of the particularities of a relationship. In writing An Unfinished Love Story, Kearns Goodwin grows in love not just for the unique qualities that undergird their relationship, but for the foundations she never got to experience. This is a clear capture of mid-century American history, told by a professional, but it is also a profoundly moving love letter—and nothing is lost in combining the two.
In retelling the life of the man she loved, Kearns Goodwin shares an important, two-part message with readers. First and foremost, fall in love with something while being wholly yourself. Passionately engage the world and those around you. She relates that she once asked her husband whether or not she would have loved him in his 20s. His response: “How would I know what I was like as a young man? I was too busy being him.” Goodwin’s whole life was about being enraptured by that around you.
And this leads to Kearns Goodwin’s second point: Fall in love with America. Using her love story with Dick as a basis, An Unfinished Love Story is a profoundly moving invitation to love the country that has provided millions with hope and opportunity. To steal the ’60s-era mantra, and to paraphrase Kearns Goodwin, all you need is love.
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