About the Author

DEBBY APPLEGATE is a graduate summa cum laude 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.

Reviews

Now nearly forgotten, Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) was an immensely famous minister, abolitionist and public intellectual whose career was rocked by allegations of adultery that made nationwide headlines. In this engaging biography, American studies scholar Applegate situates this curiously modern 19th-century figure at the focus of epochal developments in American culture. Beecher's mesmerizing oratory and fiery newspaper columns made him one of the first celebrities of the nascent mass media. His antislavery politics, though often tepid and vacillating, Applegate argues, injected a note of emotionalism into the debate that-with his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin-galvanized Northern public opinion. And by preaching a loving God instead of a wrathful one, the author contends, Beecher repudiated the dour Calvinism of his youth and made happiness and self-fulfillment, rather than sin and guilt, the centerpiece of modern Christian ideology. (The implicit moral anarchy of his creed, critics charged, evinced itself in his sexual indiscretions.) Although marred by occasionally facile psychoanalysis (Applegate describes Beecher, the seventh of 12 siblings, as a classic "middle child" personality), this assessment of Beecher is judicious and critical. Applegate gives an insightful account of a contradictory, fascinating, rather Clintonesque figure who, in many ways, was America's first liberal. (June 27) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Praise for The Most Famous Man in America

"A wonderful portrait of a charismatic preacher with a deeply flawed private life, this biography vividly conveys the color and contradictions of nineteenth-century America. With a sure grasp of history, penetrating insights into religion, and many marvelous turns of phrase, Applegate brings to life a time that uncannily prefigures our own."
-William Taubman, author of Khrushchev

"At last, Henry Beecher receives the comprehensive treatment he is due, in this perceptive, engaging, and balanced study."
-James MacGregor Burns

"Debby Applegate brings to life nineteenth-century America's most influential preacher, who emerges in this full-blooded portrait as a fascinating tangle of all-too-human traits. Drawing off an impressive body of research, the author expertly weaves together biography and history in a riveting narrative that reads like a page-turning novel."
-David S. Reynolds, author of John Brown, Abolitionist and Walt Whitman's America.

"Thoroughly researched, passionately written, and richly detailed, this book is the biography of America's greatest nineteenth-century preacher . . . must reading for serious nonfiction readers of American religion, politics and culture in Victorian America."
-Harry S. Stout, Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Religious History, Yale University

"A lively narrative of nineteenth-century religion, power, passion, and politics, as well as a perceptive study of the elusive preacher who rode them to the top."
-Joan D. Hedrick, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Harriet Beecher Stowe


"Henry Ward Beecher was a phenomenon: the scion of an amazing family, the most renowned American preacher of his day, an anti-slavery stalwart-and the main protagonist in one of the most sensational sex scandals of the Victorian era. If you thought that the personalities and machinations surrounding the Clinton impeachment scandal were interesting, you will find the Beecher expose riveting. More important, Debby Applegate has vividly brought Beecher and his entire era to life, in all of their piety, idealism, pomposity, and pride."
-Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy