I promised myself that I would read something, anything by Goodwin this year, and I did: Wait Till Next Year, which made the summer reading guide in the Nerdy Nonfiction category. I liked it so much I’m diving into the deep end with this straight-up history of the Lincoln era. My dad will be proud.

At age 6, Goodwin's father taught her how to keep score, igniting a lifelong love affair with baseball—and the Brooklyn Dodgers. This family history is hopelessly tangled with post-war life on Long Island and the grand scale events of the era. Popular (and accessible) historian Goodwin gives a fascinating glimpse into 1950s New York: the advent of television, Cold War nuclear drills, and the rise of the free agent. Surprisingly, this book isn't much of a departure from her prize-winning work on heavy-hitting subjects like Lincoln, FDR, and the Kennedys. Lots of fun—even for Yankees fans. You don't have to love baseball to love this book, but it sure doesn't hurt.

I love Doris Kearn Goodwin's work, and this is no exception. (I'm with Ann Patchett on this, who calls herself "a DKG completist.") Publishers Weekly says, "No previous biography of a president has given so complete a picture of how private lives and political questions intersect uniquely for the residents of the White House," and it's so true. I learned so much about not only the Roosevelts (fascinating and sad) but also about our country's history during their lifetime, in an absorbing way. If you read Chernow's Hamilton and thought "I had no idea American history was so fascinating" and want a similar experience in a different decade, add this one to your reading list.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is the master of the engaging popular biography; I've loved what I've read by her and this one is on my list. Ann Patchett is on record as being a Doris Kearns Goodwin completist. The publisher calls this "an engrossing biography of President Lyndon Johnson from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Team of Rivals."

Readers, I can barely believe I neglected to blog about one of my key reading intentions for 2022: I intend to become a "completist" of more authors whose work I love. (I may not have blogged about it, but I discussed my hopes/plans/dreams in this episode of What Should I Read Next.) Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of the authors whose works I'd like to read in their entirety: I'd download them into my brain if I could. In her most recent work, she profiles four United States presidents—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson—who all governed during times when the country was uniquely beset with turmoil, fear, and also hope. She profiles each in turn, examining the innate qualities that made them promising leaders, the circumstances that honed their leadership skills, and the crises through which they were called upon to lead. Inspiring, illuminating, and—to me—surprisingly timely.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of the authors whose works I'd like to read in their entirety, a master of the engaging popular biography. From the publisher: "Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit is a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. The Bully Pulpit is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine—Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S.S. McClure. The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft—a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country’s history."