Synopses & Reviews
No one predicted success for Henry Ward Beecher at his birth in 1813. The blithe, boisterous son of the last great Puritan minister, he seemed destined to be overshadowed by his brilliant siblings especially his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who penned the century's bestselling book
Uncle Tom's Cabin. But when pushed into the ministry, the charismatic Beecher found international fame by shedding his father Lyman's Old Testamentstyle fire-and-brimstone theology and instead preaching a New Testamentbased gospel of unconditional love and healing, becoming one of the founding fathers of modern American Christianity. By the 1850s, his spectacular sermons at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights had made him New York's number one tourist attraction, so wildly popular that the ferries from Manhattan to Brooklyn were dubbed "Beecher Boats."
Beecher inserted himself into nearly every important drama of the era among them the antislavery and women's suffrage movements, the rise of the entertainment industry and tabloid press, and controversies ranging from Darwinian evolution to presidential politics. He was notorious for his irreverent humor and melodramatic gestures, such as auctioning slaves to freedom in his pulpit and shipping rifles nicknamed "Beecher's Bibles" to the antislavery resistance fighters in Kansas. Thinkers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and Twain befriended and sometimes parodied him.
And then it all fell apart. In 1872 Beecher was accused by feminist firebrand Victoria Woodhull of adultery with one of his most pious parishioners. Suddenly the "Gospel of Love" seemed to rationalize a life of lust. The cuckolded husband brought charges of "criminal conversation" in a salacious trial that became the most widely covered event of the century, garnering more newspaper headlines than the entire Civil War. Beecher survived, but his reputation and his causes from women's rights to progressive evangelicalism suffered devastating setbacks that echo to this day.
Featuring the page-turning suspense of a novel and dramatic new historical evidence, Debby Applegate has written the definitive biography of this captivating, mercurial, and sometimes infuriating figure. In our own time, when religion and politics are again colliding and adultery in high places still commands headlines, Beecher's story sheds new light on the culture and conflicts of contemporary America.
Review
"Applegate steers an even course between praise and condemnation, all the while keeping the story lively....Her book succeeds as a level-headed piece of scholarship and as an enjoyable thing to read: a rare and pleasing combination." Los Angeles Times
Review
"There is much to dislike about Beecher, yet Applegate paints a sympathetic but balanced portrait of him....[O]f all the books on Beecher, The Most Famous Man in America is the most comprehensive, going all the way down to the notes the preacher made in the margins of his books." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Applegate...tells this grand story with aplomb, intelligence and a sure feel for historical context....[B]y illuminating Beecher's position in history, Applegate has produced a biography worthy of its subject." New York Times
Review
"Debby Applegate has given us an intellectually stimulating 'life and times' of Henry Ward Beecher, whose populist appeal, skill at self-invention, and ambivalent experience with celebrity seem as quintessentially American today as ever." Christian Science Monitor
Review
"An exceptionally thorough and thoughtful account of a spectacular career that helped shape and reflect national preoccupations before, during and after the Civil War." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Applegate well evokes Beecher's nineteenth-century milieu while making connections to the present day. Orators were celebrities then, and whereas twentieth-century evangelicals are reputedly anti-intellectual, the Beechers ardently advocated education." Booklist
About the Author
Debby Applegate is a summa cum laude graduate of Amherst College and was a Sterling Fellow at Yale University, where she received her Ph.D. in American Studies. She has written for publications ranging from the Journal of American History to The New York Times, and has taught at Yale and Wesleyan universities.