Fawn McKay Brodie was een biografe en geschiedenisprofessor die bekend stond om haar psychobiografische benadering van historische figuren. Ze verdiepte zich in de levens van prominente individuen, waarbij ze hun motivaties en innerlijke werelden onderzocht, vaak door de lens van de freudiaanse psychologie. Brodie's werk stond bekend om zijn onconventionele inzichten, die controverse opriepen en tegelijkertijd over het hoofd geziene historische aspecten aan het licht brachten. Haar boeiende vertelstijl bood een diepgaande verkenning van complexe menselijke levens.
The first paperback edition of the classic biography of the founder of the Mormon church, this book attempts to answer the questions that continue to surround Joseph Smith. Was he a genuine prophet, or a gifted fabulist who became enthralled by the products of his imagination and ended up being martyred for them? 24 pages of photos. Map.
"Brilliant. . . . [Brodie's] scholarship is wide and searching, and her understanding of Burton and his wife both deep and wide. She writes with clarity and zest. The result is a first class biography of an exceptional man."--J. H. Plumb, New York Times Book Review
An ambitious, perceptive portrayal of a complex man, this best-selling biography broke new ground in its exploration of Jefferson's inner life. Here for the first time we meet Jefferson as a man of feeling and passion. With a novelist's skill and meticulous scholarship, Fawn M. Brodie shows Jefferson as he wrestled with issues of revolution, religion, power, race, and love-ambivalences that exerted a subtle but powerful influence on his political writing and his decision making. The portrait that results adds a whole new depth to those of the past.