Bully Pulpit (Goodwin)

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
Doris Kearns Goodwin, 2013
Simon & Schuster
928 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416547860


Summary
One of the Best Books of the Year as chosen by The New York Times, Washington Post, Economist, Time, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, and more. “A tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue” (Associated Press).

The gap between rich and poor has never been wider…legislative stalemate paralyzes the country…corporations resist federal regulations…spectacular mergers produce giant companies…the influence of money in politics deepens…bombs explode in crowded streets…small wars proliferate far from our shores…a dizzying array of inventions speeds the pace of daily life.

These unnervingly familiar headlines serve as the backdrop for Doris Kearns Goodwin’s highly anticipated The Bully Pulpit—a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air.

The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft—a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country’s history.

The Bully Pulpit is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine—Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S. S. McClure.

Goodwin’s narrative is founded upon a wealth of primary materials. The correspondence of more than four hundred letters between Roosevelt and Taft begins in their early thirties and ends only months before Roosevelt’s death. Edith Roosevelt and Nellie Taft kept diaries. The muckrakers wrote hundreds of letters to one another, kept journals, and wrote their memoirs. The letters of Captain Archie Butt, who served as a personal aide to both Roosevelt and Taft, provide an intimate view of both men.

The Bully Pulpit, like Goodwin’s brilliant chronicles of the Civil War and World War II, exquisitely demonstrates her distinctive ability to combine scholarly rigor with accessibility. It is a major work of history—an examination of leadership in a rare moment of activism and reform that brought the country closer to its founding ideals. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—January 4, 1943
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Colby College; Ph.D., Harvard University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize, 1995 for No Ordinary Time
• Currently—lives in Concord, Massachusetts

Doris Kearns Goodwin is an award-winning American author, historian, and political commentator. She won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1995. She is the author of biographies of U.S. Presidents, including Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln; Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream; The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga; and her Pulitzer Prize winning book No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Homefront During World War II.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Goodwin actually grew up in Rockville Centre on Long Island. She attended Colby College in Maine where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa; graduating magna cum laude in 1964 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1964 to pursue her doctoral studies. She earned her Ph.D. in government from Harvard University.

In 1967, Goodwin went to Washington, D.C., as a White House Fellow during the Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) administration, working as his assistant. After Johnson left office, she assisted Johnson in drafting his memoirs. After LBJ's retirement in 1969, Goodwin taught government at Harvard for ten years, including a course on the American Presidency. In 1977, her first book, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, was published in which she drew on her conversations with the late president. The book became a New York Times bestseller and provided a launching pad for her literary career.

Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Homefront During World War II. In 1998 she received an honorary L.H.D. from Bates College. In 2005, she won the 2005 Lincoln Prize (for best book about the American Civil War) for Team of Rivals.

In 1975, Kearns married Richard N. Goodwin, who had worked in the Johnson and Kennedy administration as an adviser and a speechwriter. They have three sons, Richard, Michael and Joseph. One of her sons is heading to Iraq for a second tour of duty. As of 2007, the Goodwins live in Concord, Massachusetts.

Goodwin was the first female journalist to enter the Boston Red Sox locker room. She consulted on and appeared in Ken Burns' 1994 award-winning documentary Baseball and is a life-long supporter of both the Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
[A] revealing portraits of Theodore Roosevelt and his close friend, handpicked successor and eventual bitter rival, William Howard Taft…Ms. Goodwin uses the Roosevelt and Taft presidencies to view timely issues through the prism of the early 20th century, prompting us to reconsider the ways political dynamics have, and have not, changed. She also uses her impressive narrative skills to give us a visceral sense of the world in which Roosevelt and Taft came of age, and the wave of populism that was beginning to sweep the land. She creates emotionally detailed portraits of the two men's families, provides an informed understanding of the political forces…arrayed across the country at the time, and enlivens even highly familiar scenes like Teddy Roosevelt's daring charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and the "near riot" that broke out between Roosevelt and Taft delegates at the 1912 Republican Convention in Chicago
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


There are but a handful of times in the history of our country," Goodwin writes in her introduction, "when there occurs a transformation so remarkable that a molt seems to take place, and an altered country begins to emerge." The years covered in this book are such a time. It makes a pretty grand story…Goodwin directs her characters with precision and affection, and the story comes together like a well-wrought novel…Roosevelt and Taft and their wives and siblings and parents and children all wrote each other copious, loving and often eloquent reports. Goodwin seems to have read them all, along with every newspaper and magazine published during those years…and used them to put political intrigues and moral dilemmas and daily lives into rich and elegant language. Imagine The West Wing scripted by Henry James
Bill Keller - New York Times


Goodwin’s evocative examination of the Progressive world is smart and engaging.... She presents a highly readable and detailed portrait of an era. The Bully Pulpit brings the early 20th century to life and firmly establishes the crucial importance of the press to Progressive politics.
Washington Post


Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin has scored again with The Bully Pulpit, a thorough and well-written study of two presidents, as well as the journalists who covered them and exposed scandals in government and industry….Her genius in this huge volume (750 pages of text) is to take the three narratives and weave them into a comprehensive, readable study of the time ….The Bully Pulpit is a remarkable study of a tumultuous period in our history.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch


These fascinating times deserve a chronicler as wise and thorough as Goodwin. The Bully Pulpit is splendid reading.
Dallas Morning News


In her beautiful new account of the lives of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin spins a tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue.
Associated Press Staff



This sophisticated, character-driven book tells two big stories.... This is a fascinating work, even a timely one.... It captures the way a political party can be destroyed by factionalism, and it shows the important role investigative journalists play in political life.
Economist


(Starred review.) [A] narrative around the friendship of two very different Presidents, Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.... Goodwin links both presidents' fortunes to the rise of "muckraking" journalism...and its influence over political and social discussion.... Goodwin manages to make history very much alive and relevant. Better yet—the party politics are explicitly modern.
Publishers Weekly


President Theodore Roosevelt (TR) and his successor William Howard Taft, with a new breed of investigative reporter, took on greedy industrialists and corrupt politicians. Goodwin excels in capturing the essences of TR and Taft.... The best part of this volume is the author's presentation of the muckrakers (investigative reporters), whose research TR, in contrast to Taft, was willing to use..... Verdict: It's a long book, but it marks Goodwin's page-turner trifecta on the evolution of the modern presidency. —William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Swiftly moving account of a friendship that turned sour, broke a political party in two and involved an insistent, omnipresent press corps.... A considerable contributor to the split was TR's progressivism, his trust-busting and efforts to improve the lot of America's working people, which Taft was disinclined to emulate. Moreover, Taft did not warm to TR's great talent, which was to enlist journalists to his cause.... It's no small achievement to have something new to say on Teddy Roosevelt's presidency, but Goodwin succeeds admirably. A notable, psychologically charged study in leadership.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Talk about the differences in the economic arena between the early 20th century, the historical period of this book, and the early 21st century. How similar are the issues of economic disparity?

2. Define populism...during Rooevelt and Taft's era and during our own? The same...different? What has spurred the growth of the movement then and now?

3. What role did the press play in the Roosevelt and Taft administrations? What role do the media play today? What exactly is muckraking? Can today's journalists be considered modern muckrakers? Do we have anything comparable to McClure's magazine today?

4. This is the first book in Goodwin's oeuvre that focuses prominently on women: especially Ida Tarbell and the wives of the two presidents. Talk about the ways in which those women made a difference...and talk about the times in which they operated. How amenable was society of powerful women?

5. Of the two primary figures, Roosevelt and Taft, which do you feel made the greatest difference? Which one most impressed you—and why? How did the two men differ in personality, as well as in their political view, tactics, and effectiveness?

6. How would you explain the deterioration of the friendship between two presidents?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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