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Best of the National Book Festival: Doris Kearns Goodwin, 2018

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Welcome to our ongoing celebration of the Library of Congress National Book Festival. Each weekday, we will feature a video presentation from among the thousands of authors who have appeared at the National Book Festival and as part of our new year-long series, National Book Festival Presents. Mondays will feature topical nonfiction; Tuesday: poetry or literary fiction; Wednesday: history, biography, memoir; Thursday: popular fiction; and Friday: authors who write for children and teens. Please enjoy, and make sure to explore our full National Book Festival video collection!

Today, this series features one of the nation’s foremost historians, Doris Kearns Goodwin, speaking about her book “Leadership: In Turbulent Times” with philanthropist and Library of Congress National Book Festival co-chair David M. Rubenstein on the Main Stage at the 2018 festival in D.C.

Sue Siegel, executive director of the Library’s James Madison Council, opens the program. Of the four men Goodwin wrote about in her book – Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and LBJ – Johnson is the one she knew. Goodwin was a White Fellow while in graduate school during the Johnson Administration. She tells Rubenstein that two days after she attended the White House dance for the fellows, an article she had submitted came out in The New Republic. It’s title: “How to Remove Lyndon Johnson from Power.”