Doris Kearns Goodwin’s interest in leadership began more than half a century ago, when LBJ asked her to help him write his memoirs. That project would propel Goodwin into a decades-long career as a presidential biographer. Her books include the bestselling Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, the Pulitzer Prize–winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, and the runaway bestseller Team of Rivals, which was the basis for Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award-winning film Lincoln. She is also a recipient of the Carnegie Medal for The Bully Pulpit, the New York Times bestselling chronicle of the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. In her latest book, Leadership: In Turbulent Times (Simon & Schuster), Goodwin draws upon the four presidents she has studied most closely—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson—to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others. Each would be faced by dramatic reversals that disrupted their lives and threatened to shatter forever their ambitions. Nonetheless, they all emerged fitted to confront the contours and dilemmas of their times. Warren Buffett writes, “Business students invariably ask me: ‘With what historical figure would you like to have lunch?’ Doris Kearns Goodwin has prepared a marvelous banquet with four leaders whose lives provide lessons for all of us. Pull up a chair.”
