Leadership in Turbulent Times
By Doris Kearns Goodwin

Hardcover 496 pages, Simon & Schuster; First Edition/First Printing edition (September 18, 2018)

Reviewed by Karen Pulver
December, 2019

About a year ago my husband and I drove to Springfield, where the Lincoln Library and Museum was holding a fund raiser. We've been members of the museum for several years and enjoy bringing friends and family to this Spielberg-inspired and designed facility. I often think that one can feel the presence of Abraham Lincoln when walking around Springfield, a place very different from the Chicago suburbs.

We were drawn to this particular fund raiser because Doris Kearns Goodwin would be there talking about her latest book. After a gala reception in the Library, the crowd moved to the lobby of the museum where a member of the museum staff conducted a conversational interview.

Leadership in Turbulent Times compares the political styles of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Goodwin, popularly known for her contributions to several of PBS series created by Ken Burns, has published other books about these presidents, the best known being Team of Rivals. She writes and converses as though she knows all these men and their families, not just Johnson in whose White House she worked.

The main thrust of the book involves the Presidents' handling of the major crises that occurred during their terms in office: for Lincoln it was the Civil War; for Johnson, the Vietnam War and the days following the Kennedy assassination; for FDR, the Great Depression, polio and beginnings of World War II; for Theodore Roosevelt, his personal health challenges, labor strikes, and bitter political treachery.

I recently visited the LBJ Ranch and the LBJ Library in Austin and the Roosevelt homes in Hyde Park and Oyster Bay, New York. Presidential libraries are often a part of our car trips. They make this book and author event even more meaningful to me. I hardly need to recommend the work of a respected author (who has struggled with her own professional troubles), but I cannot praise more highly the study of U.S. history through travels to places like Springfield, Illinois and meeting with authors, as FAW enables us to do.