An Unfinished Love Story — A Review
A Review, via Haiku
Love outlasts the years
America, passion, youth
A story to tell.
We tend to think of history as something written in dates, names, and events. But sometimes, history is also a love story. I didn’t expect to love this book, but it left me with a profound sense of appreciation for the generation who dreamed of a new frontier and believed that, from centuries of injustice, America could grow a great society.
📚 At a Glance
- Book: An Unfinished Love Story
- Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Genre: Biography / American History / Memoir
- Setting: 1960s America
- Best for: Readers interested in American history, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, civil rights, political history, and deeply personal memoir
Like a true love story, An Unfinished Love Story begins with the energy and idealism of youth. And while it is the chronicle of two lives, devoted and intertwined across decades, it is also a story of love and devotion to America—and to the promise that sometimes only the young can fully embrace.
Doris Kearns Goodwin crafts a history of America through her own experiences and those of her husband, Richard Goodwin, who served as an aide and speechwriter in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. She writes of passion, devotion, and love of country, and through this, she reveals her own admiration and love for her husband and his unrelenting passion for justice, liberty, and country.
Goodwin interlaces biographical events with major events in U.S. history across the 1960s while telling her own personal journey with her husband as they go through his personal archives, letter by letter and photograph by photograph, to create a unique and deeply personal account.
She narrates the audiobook version, which at first I did not fully appreciate. As the history continued, however, I began to feel her devotion to her own personal slice of Americana and to understand how proud she was of her husband’s contributions to President Kennedy’s New Frontier, the Peace Corps, the civil rights movement, President Johnson’s Great Society, and the truth about the Vietnam War. Her voice became essential to the storytelling, and by the end, I had gained a new appreciation for her personal story—told only as she can tell it.
I’ve read several of Goodwin’s books and, as with many biographical accounts, I often find that her treatment of her subjects can be overly optimistic and lack the presentation of alternative perspectives. For this book, however, this optimistic portrayal is expected, endearing, and helps convey her enthusiasm and devotion to American ideals in a way that contributes to the story itself.
This book is a wonderful addition to any TBR pile for readers who want to explore the 1960s in a new way. It offers an intimate perspective on key moments in our collective history that few other books can provide. Goodwin’s unique combination of research and memory presents this history in a way that is both unique and approachable.
📦 Would We Include It in a Box?
For an American history buff, absolutely!
It is a must-read. It’s not often that a biographical history can be endearing, educational, and inspiring all in one package.
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📚 Just Want the Book?
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📚 If You Loved An Unfinished Love Story, Try These Next
| If you loved… | Try… |
|---|---|
| The intimate Johnson White House perspective | Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History— Michael L. Gillette |
| The Kennedy years | The Making of the President 1960 — Theodore H. White |
| The insider perspective on the Kennedys | A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. |
| Richard Goodwin’s political world | The Best and the Brightest — David Halberstam |
| Doris Kearns Goodwin’s storytelling | Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream — Doris Kearns Goodwin |