Doris Helen Kearns Goodwin was born on 4 January 1943, in Brooklyn, New York City USA, of part-Irish descent, and is a political commentator, biographer and historian, best known for being the author of several US presidents’ biographies. Some of the books she’s written include “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”, and “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream”. All of her efforts have helped put her net worth to where it is today.
How rich is Doris Kearns Goodwin? As of mid-2017, sources estimate a net worth that is at $10 million, mostly earned through a successful career as a biographer. She also won a Pulitzer Prize for History thanks to her work in “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II”. All of these achievements have ensured the position of her wealth.
Doris Kearns Goodwin Net Worth $10 million
Doris attended Colby College and would graduate in 1964 as magna cum laude. In the same year, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to allow her to pursue doctoral studies, and she then attended Harvard University from where she would graduate with a PhD in government four years later.
Prior to completing her doctoral studies, Kearns served as a White House Fellow of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. She was originally intended to be an Oval Office assistant during her internship, but was instead assigned to the Department of Labor, due to her involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement. She would later become a member of Johnson’s staff and focused on anti-poverty efforts. In 1969, during the end of Johnson’s tenure, Kearns returned to Harvard to teach, and would do so for the next decade. She also started to draft Johnson’s memoirs leading to “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream” which was released in 1977. It became a New York Times bestseller, launching her writing career and increasing her net worth significantly.
Doris also worked as a journalist, and was the first female journalist to enter the locker room of the Boston Red Sox. In 1994, she released “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front During World War II” which would earn a Pulitzer Prize for History the following year. In 2005, she then won the Lincoln Prize thanks to her book “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”, which was adapted for a film in 2012 entitled “Lincoln”. Doris also frequently featured on “Meet the Press” and “Charlie Rose”, and additionally was a consultant on the Stephen King novel “11/22/63” which paints a worst case scenario if history changed. A few of her latest endeavors include winning the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction for her work in “The Bully Pulpit”, awarded in 2014. She also made an appearance in an episode of “American Horror Story: Roanoke”.
For her personal life, it is known that in 1975 Kearns married Richard N. Goodwin, who worked for the Johnson and Kennedy Administrations – they have three children and reside in Concord, Massachusetts. She’s been under some criticism alleging of plagiarism, which caused her to resign from “PBS NewsHour” and the Pulitzer Prize Board.
