American author and historian known for her highly regarded presidential studies.

In 1964 Kearns received a bachelor's degree from Colby College, Waterville, Maine, and in 1968 she earned a doctorate in government from Harvard University, where she later taught government. In 1975 she married Richard Goodwin, who had served as an adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy (Kennedy, John F.) and Lyndon B. Johnson (Johnson, Lyndon B.). Named a White House fellow in 1967, Goodwin met President Johnson, who asked her to help with his memoirs despite the fact that she had cowritten an article critical of the Vietnam War. Her acquaintance with Johnson resulted in her first book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1976).

Goodwin's next book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (1987), was a best seller and was made into a television miniseries in 1990, but in 2002 it became publicly known that the book contained unattributed quotations from author Lynne McTaggart. Goodwin maintained that her plagiarism was unintentional and was related to her note-taking methods, and she settled a copyright infringement suit by McTaggart out of court. Goodwin won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in history for her No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (1994), and in 2005 she wrote Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

In addition to her works of presidential scholarship, Goodwin wrote Wait till Next Year: A Memoir (1997), about growing up in the 1950s and her love for the Brooklyn Dodgers. She also served as a news analyst for NBC and as a consultant for Ken Burns's documentary The History of Baseball (1994).