Profile: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Pulitzer Prize for History

"I got to know this crazy character when I was only 23 years old. He's still the most formidable, fascinating, frustrating, irritating individual I think I've ever known in my entire life."

Doris Kearns Goodwin first met President Lyndon B. Johnson at a White House dance in 1967. At the time, she was a White House Fellow, but she had recently published an article which was sharply critical of Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War. Instead of arguing with her, the President asked her to dance. At the end of the evening, he suggested that she be assigned to work with him at the White House; after his retirement, he sought her adivce and assistance in the preparation of his presidential memoirs. Her own account of his presidency, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, established her national reputation as a historian.

She has since written best-selling studies of three other presidents and their inner circles: The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys; No Ordinary Time (on the lives of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt), which earned her the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for History; and Team of Rivals, on Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet. Her books, political commentary and regular appearances on the leading television news programs have made her one of the most respected authorities on the American Presidency.