The following is from RootsTech
(SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH—November 4, 2015)—
RootsTech, the largest family history
conference in the world, announced
Doris
Kearns Goodwin has joined its lineup of keynote speakers. Goodwin, a
world-renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning author, will speak at the RootsTech
general session on Saturday, February 6, at the Salt Palace Convention Center
in Salt Lake City, Utah. Goodwin will share her insights into the
personal and family lives of past presidential leaders and the influence their
ancestors had on their personalities, behavior, decisions, and careers. She
will also share anecdotes about her own family and experiences which have
shaped and influenced her life.
Goodwin has been hailed by
New York magazine
as
“America’s historian-in-chief” for her in-depth scrutiny into the lives,
actions, and family influences of America’s presidents, and the history of the
country. She provided extensive subject matter expertise for PBS and the
History Channel’s documentaries on the Kennedy family, LBJ, Franklin Roosevelt,
Abraham and Mary Lincoln, and Ken Burns’
The History of Baseball and
The
History of The Civil War. She also worked with Steven Spielberg on the
movie
Lincoln, based in part on Goodwin’s award-winning
Team of
Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
Goodwin received the Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for
No Ordinary Time:
Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. In
addition, she has authored biographies of several other U.S. Presidents,
including
Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream; The Fitzgeralds and the
Kennedys: An American Saga; Team of rivals: The Political Genius of
Abraham Lincoln (which was awarded the Lincoln Prize),and her most recent
boo
k, The Bully
Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of
Journalism.
Goodwin‘s biographies are not limited to presidents and politicians.
Wait Till Next Year, her touching, best-selling memoir, draws
her readers into life as she knew it in the 1950s in the suburbs of New York.
She portrays the post-World War II era New York when the corner store was the
gathering place for people to share stories and discuss their baseball
differences with neighbors who were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and
Yankee fans.
Goodwin is expected to share memories of the lifelong influence of her parents:
her mother, who taught her the joy of books, and her father, who taught her the
joy of baseball and the Dodgers. She describes how two events deeply affected
her: the Dodgers left Brooklyn in 1957 and the death of her mother. Both
events marked the end of an era and, for her, the end of childhood.
Goodwin wrote
Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream using
first-hand insight into President Lyndon B. Johnson’s life. She served as an
assistant in LBJ’s last year in the White House, and later assisted him in the
preparation of his memoirs. On his 107th birthday, August 27, 2015,
Goodwin said in retrospect, “LBJ was surely the most colorful politician I have
ever met…. How I wish the LBJ that I knew in private—the colorful, ever
fascinating, larger-than-life figure—had been able to project more of that
effervescent personality into his public life.”
Goodwin is a frequent guest commentator on most of the major networks.
Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios has also purchased film rights to her book,
The
Bully Pulpit, which chronicles the first 10 years of the Progressive era
through the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft.
Other keynote speakers for RootsTech 2016
announced previously
are
New York Times bestselling author
Bruce
Feiler, award-winning journalist
Paula Williams
Madison, and the president and CEO of
FamilySearch
International, Stephen Rockwood. See the
Keynote Page at
RootsTech.org for more information about each of these speakers.
For more information or to register for RootTech 2016, go to
RootsTech.org.
###
About RootsTech
RootsTech is the largest family history event in the world, reaching
hundreds of thousands of participants around the world. Originating at
the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City and simulcast around the world, many sessions
will be recorded for later viewing. Participants learn how to discover,
preserve, and share family stories and connections across generations.
World-class speakers will be featured, entertainment and engaging classes are
offered, and with the event, in a vast expo hall, everyone, regardless of age
or experience, will find something of interest.
In addition to Elder and Sister Renlund, attendees will hear from other
Church leaders, including Primary general president Rosemary M. Wixom and
Brother Stephen W. Owen of the Young Men general presidency.
