Conn. congressman sees factual flaw in 'Lincoln'

[Tom Ripley]

10. That may mean that someone else got it wrong first and she just ran with it

Plagiarism controversy

In 2002, The Weekly Standard determined that her book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys used without attribution numerous phrases and sentences from three other books: Time to Remember, by Rose Kennedy; The Lost Prince, by Hank Searl; and Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times, by Lynne McTaggart.[18]

McTaggart weighed in, "If somebody takes a third of somebody's book, which is what happened to me, they are lifting out the heart and guts of somebody else's individual expression."[19] Goodwin admitted that she had previously reached a large "private settlement" with McTaggart over the issue. She wrote in Time:

Fourteen years ago, not long after the publication of my book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, I received a communication from author Lynne McTaggart pointing out that material from her book on Kathleen Kennedy had not been properly attributed. I realized that she was right. Though my footnotes repeatedly cited Ms. McTaggart's work, I failed to provide quotation marks for phrases that I had taken verbatim, having assumed that these phrases, drawn from my notes, were my words, not hers. I made the corrections she requested, and the matter was completely laid to rest—until last week, when the Weekly Standard published an article reviving the issue. The larger question for those of us who write history is to understand how citation mistakes can happen.[20]

Slate magazine also reported that there were multiple passages in Goodwin’s book on the Roosevelts (No Ordinary Time) that were apparently taken from Joseph Lash’s Eleanor and Franklin, Hugh Gregory Gallagher’s FDR’s Splendid Deception, and other books, although she "scrupulously" footnoted the material. Furthermore, The Los Angeles Times reported similar circumstances concerning her book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys.[21][22] The allegations of plagiarism caused her to leave her position as a guest pundit on the PBS NewsHour program.[23]