Barbara's Reviews > An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s

As a child of the 'Sixties growing up during the times of JFK, RFK, MLK, LBJ, and Richard Nixon, I've been an outsider to many of the events described in this engaging account of various historical moments from the points of view of two political insiders--Doris Kearns Goodwin and her late husband Richard Goodwin. Drawing from memory, notes, diaries, archival material, and interviews with relevant individuals, Goodwin weaves together history, biography, and memoir as she and Dick spend the last years of his life sifting through boxes of memorabilia from that decade. The narrative includes conversations between the two of them while they are reminiscing and sorting out their complicated feelings about JFK and LBJ, for whom Dick wrote speeches while Doris served as a White House Fellow and later wrote LBJ's biography. It's clear that the 1960s were a turbulent time, but they also were a period filled with possibility and promise with various civil rights legislation being passed by Congress, successful space travel, and youth feeling as though they could make a difference and be heard. Because so much of what was good about that time period was overshadowed by violence at home and abroad in Vietnam, it's easy to see how Dick could have become disheartened. But as this book shows, his was an unfinished love story with politics, and as it turned out, both Dick and Doris emerge from their labors with a renewed appreciation of those times as well as hope for the future. Readers trying to make sense of present-day politics will gain insight by reading this book, clearly a labor of love from a thoughtful historian who manages to simplify complex processes and unravel some of the mysteries behind complex individuals. Clearly, in their heyday, this was one heck of a power couple. I enjoyed every word, laughed at times, cried at times, and felt terribly nostalgic for that decade.