Doris Kearns Goodwin: Historian turns a page
But for Doris Kearns Goodwin, among others, the Great Hall is a landmark graced by history: Abraham Lincoln was here. He stood on that stage and spoke in early 1860, an address that established him as a national candidate, not just an Illinois lawyer and orator, and helped get him elected.
"You can't imagine what it's like for somebody who has tried to bring him to life to know he was actually here alive, and at such an important moment of his career," she says, looking toward the back of the room, where a portrait of Lincoln hangs.
For the past decade, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian has dwelled with the spirit of Lincoln, the most scrutinized of all American presidents. It was a needed break for Goodwin from a time when she herself was scrutinized. She's now on a tour to promote her new book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
Three years ago, well into the Lincoln book, Goodwin acknowledged a Weekly Standard report that her 1987 release, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, contained sections of text taken without attribution from another author, Lynne McTaggart.
Goodwin, 62, has said the copying was accidental, the result of a longhand note-taking system that didn't distinguish between her own observations and passages from other texts. Both she and McTaggart said they had reached a settlement years earlier that included an undisclosed payment and revisions to Goodwin's book.
But the controversy grew. After discovering additional passages that closely paralleled the original sources, Goodwin ordered the book removed from stores and promised a new edition, which has yet to be written.
"I just got right back to [the Lincoln book], which was more important," says Goodwin, who has no plans to revise her work until after her tour, which comes to Miami on Tuesday....
Whatever damage she caused herself, it has not lowered expectations for her new book, which contains more than 100 pages of source notes. Simon & Schuster announced a first printing of 400,000 copies and Team of Rivals quickly entered the Top 10 on Amazon.com; it's No. 3 on The New York Times best-sellers list this week. Steven Spielberg has acquired film rights.
Many welcome her return. Book sellers have liked her all along, as an individual and as a historian; just two months after the scandal broke, she was received warmly at the industry's national convention, BookExpo America, where she was a featured speaker.
She also remains highly respected among her peers, with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Sean Wilentz and Robert Dallek among those who defended her. Some top Lincoln scholars, including Harold Holzer, Michael Burlingame and Goodwin's friend, David Herbert Donald, have praised her new book.
"You don't want to keep a person with her talent in perennial handcuffs," says Holzer, author of 23 books on Lincoln and the Civil War. "To have someone with her dazzling writing ability turn to Lincoln is a great boon to the Lincoln field."