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Doris Kearns Goodwin
Pulitzer Prize for History
Then, once they get into the presidency and he (FDR) becomes paralyzed by polio, she (Eleanor) becomes in many ways his eyes and his ears. Without her, his presidency never would have been as rich as it was. She traveled the country on his behalf, bringing him back a deep sense of what was happening in the land. She was much more active on civil rights, on poverty, on coal miners than he was, and really made his presidency more socially just than it would have been. He would be the first to admit that she made him stronger. And then she admitted, at the end of his life, that without him she would not have had the platform to be Eleanor Roosevelt. So just knowing how you can go through very difficult times in your own married life and still form this extraordinary partnership, I think, is what I took away from that book.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin
Pulitzer Prize for History
I found an usher's diary at the Roosevelt Library that recorded what Franklin and Eleanor did every day. "Awakened at 6:30; had breakfast with Henry Stimson; had lunch with Joe Lash," or whatever. I could then go to the diaries of the people they had lunch or breakfast with to record what they said at breakfast or lunch. Eleanor wrote 25 letters a day to her friends. I got every single one of those letters and figured out what her mood was like on that day. Made a huge chronology, before I even started the book, of 1940 to '45, the years that I was covering, so that I could recreate every day, in a certain sense, in their lives.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin
Pulitzer Prize for History
As much research as you think you're doing, you're going to mess up, without a question. There are some times -- I mean, I got the date of Roosevelt's birthday wrong! I can't believe it! I knew what his birthday was, and somehow I'd typed it wrong into the typewriter, and in the first edition of the book I had it the wrong day. Then immediately one reader called me up. Luckily now, the great thing about books is they print new and newer editions every few weeks, so you can correct your mistakes. And then, the next edition that comes out had the right date in it. There will be more serious things like that, that you might get wrong. Somebody will come up to you afterwards and say, "You know, you just didn't interpret this right. I was there," and maybe you didn't interview that person. What I think I've learned is that you're never going to get it all right, and you can't obsess about having a fact wrong or a date wrong or something like that, as long as you tried as best you could. And you know some of them you will be able to change with the new editions of the book or the paperback. But even if it's still wrong, if it is not meant, if you've done the kind of research that you're sure is pretty good, then you just have to have confidence in it, so that nothing is perfect in life. I think that is what the criticism has helped me to understand.
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Mikhail Gorbachev
Nobel Prize for Peace
My position was as follows: through democracy, through glasnost, compel people, rouse people to speak for themselves, analyze, and decide for themselves what is to be done. That was the main thing that drove me. Of course I also saw that the country was breaking down, that it was beginning to lag behind. It could not react appropriately to the challenges of the technological revolution; it was not flexible because the people were permitted no initiative, no freedom. The entrepreneurs were not permitted this, nor was anyone else: teachers, physicians, engineers, scientists. Everything was under control; everything was in gridlock or stagnant. That's what I saw and that is the main thing, of course, that motivated me.
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Stephen Jay Gould
Evolutionary Biologist and Paleontologist
Any profession has a vast amount of tedium attached to it. There's no sense not admitting it, if you're passionate about it, tedium can be -- not exactly a joy -- but can be perfectly tolerable. The tedium of a pianist is 10 hours of practice a day or whatever, not all of which is inspirational. The tedium of an experimental scientist is calibrating the machines and doing it over and over again. The tedium of a paleontologist is poring over a microscope, or using a dental pick to chip away the sand grains from the fossil, or looking at the statistical figures in the columns of a computer printout. Every profession has massive tedium, that's certainly true. You cannot be a successful professional (without it). But I think if you're committed to it, as they say, it goes with the territory. It's part of the work. It's a necessary accoutrement to anything that's exciting.
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