Fawn McKay Brodie war eine Biografin und Geschichtsprofessorin, die für ihren psychobiografischen Ansatz bei historischen Persönlichkeiten bekannt war. Sie tauchte tief in die Leben bedeutender Individuen ein und erforschte deren Motivationen und Innenwelten, oft durch die Brille der Freudschen Psychologie. Brodies Werk zeichnete sich durch unkonventionelle Einblicke aus, die Kontroversen auslösten und gleichzeitig übersehene historische Aspekte ins öffentliche Bewusstsein brachten. Ihr fesselnder Erzählstil bot eine tiefe Erkundung komplexer menschlicher Leben.
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.