Fawn McKay Brodie è stata una biografa e professoressa di storia rinomata per il suo approccio psicobiografico alle figure storiche. Si è addentrata nelle vite di individui di spicco, esplorando le loro motivazioni e i loro mondi interiori, spesso attraverso la lente della psicologia freudiana. Il lavoro di Brodie era noto per le sue intuizioni non convenzionali, che hanno suscitato controversie e, allo stesso tempo, hanno portato alla luce aspetti storici trascurati. Il suo avvincente stile narrativo ha offerto una profonda esplorazione di vite umane complesse.
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.