https://thebestbiographies.com/2019/0...“The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher” is historian Debby Applegate’s inaugural biographical work and earned the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2007. For the past several years Applegate has been working on a biography of Polly Adler, a Prohibition-era brothel keeper in New York City.Applegate first began studying Beecher while an undergraduate at Amherst College – which was also her biographical subject’s alma mater (a cent...

This book is not only a thorough exploration of a remarkable man, but a marvelous tour through 19th century America.Recently, I asked two people in their 30's if they had ever heard of Henry Ward Beecher. They had not. They did recognize the name of his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe. How time erases celebrity! H.W. Beecher was deeply involved in the major issues of his times, was credited by both Lincoln and Robert E. Lee with determining the outcome of the Civil War and became involved in a leg...

The bumptious, angry, confused adolescence that America went through in its first 100 years is brought resplendently to life in this biography of Beecher who, in many ways, personified the search for a workable identity that consumed the young nation. This incredibly epochal period saw the country wrestle with the choice of a strong aristocracy or a democracy, fight another war with Britain, and launch the wholesale extermination of indigenous populations, loftily calling it manifest destiny. Po...

In the first part of the book the reader gets not only a biography but a description of life in post-Revolutionary America up to the Civil War. Through the life of Henry Beecher we get a look at how Calvinism of the period infused a pious household and how the Great Awakening played out in that clerical family.The author's presentation of the country's social and intellectual changes through the life of Henry Beecher is a fascinating read. We see how the times forced the severe Lyman's move to B...

As one of the members of our book club said, if you stop reading before Chapter 10 you can go away thinking that Henry Ward Beecher was a good man. Born a Puritan of Puritans in New England, he emigrated West and then returned to the East again, landing in Brooklyn, where he became famous as the pastor of Plymouth Church. Applegate's biography is also a history of American religion in the 19th Century, and particularly of the great transition that took place as Calvinism died away and was replac...

This biography tells the story of a man eminently famous in his day, but relatively obscure in our time. This is a finely researched and well-written book that pulls the reader through the life of this complex man without descending into the dull recounting of years that often characterize historical biographies. The author, Debby Applegate, respects her character, but doesn’t caulk over his faults with thin defenses or convoluted explanations of his sometimes puzzling and unconscionable behavio...

Applegate performs an astounding feat here: she manages to explain, concisely and clearly, everything from the origins and results of the Civil War to why religion played such a major rolein 19th century American life. On top of that, she illuminates the fascinating Beecher family, shining a light on Henry Ward, the most modern of that old Calvinist family. A really terrific read - bravo!

I absolutely loved this book. It is so packed with detail and intimate knowledge of the personal lives of Beecher, his family and contemporaries, (who wrote thousands of long letters still extant) that it reads like a novel. If you are interested in questions of faith, or how to live a good life, to be of service to others...deeply individual and personal matters set against the very public and momnumental events of American history like the Civil War, you will love this too. Now I want to read

An extremely well executed biography of a major figure in 19th century American culture - the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and scion of an absolutely fascinating New England family. Wonderfully and suscinctly written. At the end I have the sense that I know his personality, affect, drives. Well deserving of the Pulitzer Prize that it won.

Isn't it interesting how one sibling often gets the credit when another sibling provides the substance? I personally had filed Henry Ward Beecher in my mental file as a great abolitionist when his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin), embraced the cause sooner and more consistently.Indeed, the most amazing part of this biography to me was discovering how inconsistent Beecher was, not only with regard to abolitionism, but also with regard to faith. He interpreted his faith

I lost interest in this book after about 100 pages but kept reading because it had come highly recommended to me by a friend. I made it to page 268 before I just simply gave up. The life of Henry Ward Beecher was interesting at points, but the book seemed to lack cohesion. At 268 pages I decided to skip ahead to the chapter dealing with his affair with Elizabeth Tilton, but I lost interest in him as a person by that point- so I found myself not caring about it. Applegate's narrative was hard to

A solid, reasonably well-written and researched biography. Unfortunately, the author permits her skepticism of Beecher's Christianity unintentionally to make Beecher out to as a bit of a skeptic. She doesn't give his faith enough historic credence; on this front, the development of Beecher's theology is unjustly neglected; I only received a vague idea of what he actually believed, and how this changed over time--more discussion of his theological writings and sermons, not just his fascinating bi...

Finished reading "The Most Famous Man in America," the story of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and how he tried to weave his way through antebellum America with the intransigent issue of slavery immovable and promising to hurl America toward a conflagration that would destroy the Union. It was slavery and abolitionism 24/7 without rest, decade upon decade. Beecher was an abolition man and yet not a "barner," one who threatened to burn the whole barn down. He somehow found a way to avoid the radicals wi...

This was a complete surprise. I knew virtually nothing, no actually literally nothing about Henry Ward Beecher. I only learned from the book jacket that he was brother to Harriet Beecher Stowe. So it was fun to read about something about which I had almost no preconceived ideas. This is a highly readable account , very well written and researched and fascinating to a degree I hardly expected. I have been a Civil War 'buff' forever but it was always about the the Generals and the battles. But the...

Very informative biography of a "celebrity preacher" from a different era. Henry Ward Beecher was the son of prominent Puritan minister Lyman Beecher. Henry also entered the ministry and over the years turned further and further from his father's Calvinism ... and even from orthodox Christian faith. Of most interest was how Beecher became deeply involved and influential in politics (especially as an anti-slavery activist), and of course the issue of his alleged womanizing, climaxing in the adult...

A hefty undertaking. I enjoyed reading more about the family. I felt like it could have used a few more revisions and a few more clarifications-- some intriguing bits were glossed over and others were just confusing. That exposition bit there was almost relieving after the long, drawn out silence. I almost wished that the surviving letters had been reprinted. I get the feeling that it was rushed in order to make a splash after Woodhull's bio came out. One thing is for sure, American Politics hav...

Pulitzer-Prize-winning biography of Henry Ward Beecher. Think a combination of Billy Graham and Donald Trump. What charisma can do: the man charms, seduces, beds his friends’ wives and his friends grovel, even when they hate him. Oh, and throw in the sordid fascination of the OJ trial: there were (so it is claimed) more stories in the newspapers of the day about the Beecher adultery trial than there had been about the Civil War during its four years. This is a snapshot of the Gilded Age: sex, mo...

Harry Beecher was an important man in his time, making it more socially acceptable for white middle class people to support the abolitionist movement and popularizing the love of God. The book doesn’t read quickly, as there are many people involved, and I finished it out of duty and persistence more than anything else.

read with westridge alum book club;Winner Pulitzer prize, 2007.really engaging story, amazing and interesting history surrounding the man, his times, his character. book was very long, and a slow read.

One simply wants to meet the man after reading this beautifully written biography. Oh would that we could. However, it is well worth it to read for the history of religion, politics and slavery in this country.

I didn't know much of Henry Beecher and this book was interesting. He had an outsized impact on politics and culture. Unfortunately his impact on the church probably still reverberates today.I would recommend other biographies over this one though.

The book is well written and carefully footnotes. It was a sad story to me, as Henry Beecher had so many problems.

A must-read to understand so many threads of American history. The amount of research this author did to produce this book is incredible. Yet her writing style is far from academic. #ReadMoreWomen

Interesting how someone who introduced America to a kinder God was seduced by temptations of fame and felt unconstrained by societal restrictions on marriage, financial frugality, and humility.

Fascinating history, and well-written.

Except for his life before his marriage, the book worked better as a study of the slavery debate through the end of the war.

Book is beautifully written. I enjoyed it most from a historical perspective. Lots of famous people like Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain walked into it. Answered a lot of questions about what the people were like at that time, the evolution of Calvinism, and what the churches were like. He was famous because he was infamous and it is always interesting to see what decisions lead to such and end. Liked that it really showed his character and the people around him.

After being raised under the strict doctrines of Calvinism by his famous father Lyman Beecher, Henry Ward Beecher experienced astonishing success as an influential minister and orator proclaiming the contradictory “Gospel of Love” during the 1800s. In The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, Debby Applegate gives a detailed account of Beecher’s prominent effect on America before and after the Civil War. Applegate gives us an elaborate picture of Henry Ward Beecher’s l...

This is the first history I've read in quite awhile that kept my interest throughout. Perhaps this is because it's a biography and the genre necessitates a narrative structure. Great stuff here. I knew pretty much nothing about Henry Ward Beecher before reading 'The Most Famous Man in America' other than his relation to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Nonetheless he was a very important actor in the development of the modern American experience. The first compassionate, secularized popular preacher in Am...

I really enjoyed this book but with some reservations. It was exactingly researched. You can tell that Derby has amassed mountains of notes on her subject, and sculpting them into a cohesive, compelling narrative took remarkable talent. My reservations are based mostly on the type of history I like to read, but I also think that she missed one of the major themes of the Beechers' collective story, and the nation's: race. Derby fails to note that the early Temperance movement championed by Lyman