Doris Kearns Goodwin Receives the 2010 Ted Kennedy Award for Writing

From left to right: Bob Kerrey, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Gaston Caperton

On April 26, the College Board’s National Commission on Writing proudly recognized acclaimed historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin with the 2010 Ted Kennedy Award, in recognition of writing that has greatly influenced national and world history. The award was presented to Goodwin by Bob Kerrey, former U.S. senator and governor of Nebraska, at a special luncheon and ceremony attended by educators, writers and special guests at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

College Board President Gaston Caperton said, “As a great fan of her work and a deep admirer of her passion for writing, it is an honor to present the Ted Kennedy Award to Doris Kearns Goodwin. Doris has spent her entire career profiling giants of American history, affording us greater knowledge of ourselves in the process. If historians are a country’s institutional memory, then Doris is one of America’s national treasures.” 

Goodwin eloquently spoke about the importance of history. “History at its best is about telling stories — stories about people who lived before, about events in the past that created the contours of the present. By studying the lives of others, we hope that we, the living, can learn from their struggles and triumphs.”

Bob Kerrey, who also serves as chair of the National Commission on Writing, presented Goodwin with the award, which read in part, “Through her writing and her speaking, we all have a better understanding of the world and the nation in which we live. From Abraham Lincoln to Lyndon Johnson, from politics to baseball, her words have made complicated matters understandable, personal memories universal, and the past relevant to the present.”

This award was first created in 2009 to honor the legacy of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. The first award recipient was Theodore “Ted” Sorensen, former special counsel and adviser to President John F. Kennedy and a widely published author on the presidency and foreign affairs.

Doris Kearns Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in history for No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, which was a best-seller in hardcover and trade paper. She is also the author of the best-sellers Wait till Next Year, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. Goodwin lectures around the world, and is often called upon by the media to comment upon and analyze presidential issues. She lives in Concord, Mass., with her husband, Richard Goodwin.