Charles True Goodsell (July 23, 1932 – November 24, 2024) was an American academic and writer who was Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech's Center for Public Administration and Policy.
[1] Goodsell was a co-author of the Blacksburg Manifesto,[2] written with Gary Wamsley, Robert Bacher, Philip Kronenberg, John Rohr, Camilla Stivers, Orion White, and James Wolf – all of whom were at Virginia Tech during the 1980s.
Key, Jr.[4] Goodsell began his academic teaching career as an assistant professor of public administration at the University of Puerto Rico in 1961.
Intended to be a rebuttal to the popular notion of bureaucracy as a callous, oppressive, and dysfunctional machine, it has been the recipient of much praise within the field of public administration.
[11] In The American statehouse: Interpreting democracy's temples, Goodsell reviews all fifty United States’ capitals and their buildings.