Gould was born September 21, 1939, in New York City. His father
Jack Gould was television critic of
The New York Times from 1947 to 1972. He took his A.B. from Brown University, in 1961, and his PhD in history from Yale University, in 1966.
Howard R. Lamar directed his dissertation. He was an instructor and assistant professor at Yale, 1965-1967, then spent his career at the University of Texas at Austin. He became full professor in 1976 and was Eugene C. Barker Centennial Professor of American history, 1983-98. He chaired the History Department, 1980-84. He became professor emeritus in 1998. He was a visiting professor at
Monmouth College. He married medievalist Karen D. Keel in 1970; she died in 2012. In May 2016 he married Jeanne Gittings Robeson. They live in Monmouth, Illinois. His awards include
National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship (1974), and Carr P. Collins Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters in 1974. Gould in 1982 developed the nation's first course on presidential spouses. His research on
Lady Bird Johnson demonstrated her impact on the environmental movement. In 1998 he launched a book series on "Modern First Ladies" for the
University Press of Kansas. That led to his books:
Lady Bird Johnson: Our Environmental First Lady (1999),
Helen Taft: Our Musical First Lady (2010) and
Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Creating the Modern First Lady (2012). In 2021 the First Ladies Association for Research and Education (FLARE) established an annual prize named after Gould in recognition of his pioneering scholarship on the historical role of
First Ladies. Gould was also the first winner. ==Evaluations==