Anyone reading this book who expects to receive insights that Fawn Brodie was a demon, or a person who "was out to get the LDS Church" will be disappointed. The author comes through as a bright scholar, a loyal wife, and a loving mother. In many ways, I was surprised to learn what a normal and conservative background Fawn had.

Fawn was a brilliant young woman who came from a family of mostly Scottish ancestry who resided in a small town in Northern Utah, called Huntsville. Early in her life, Fawn exhibited signs of great intelligence and precocity. She skipped many grades in school, and as I recall, had earned a bachelor's degree from college when she was 18 years old.

Fawn was able to attend the University of Chicago in the 1930's and it was there that she did most of the research for her best-known book "No Man Knows My History". A surprising amount of material needed for the book was right there in the university library. The thought that crossed my mind, after reading this book, was that uncovering many of the *problems* she perceived in Joseph Smith's story was not particularly difficult. One has the impression of someone who started out as an orthodox Mormon and begins to investigate various claims one by one. As she comes across the historical record, she at first becomes a bit surprised, than startled, and finally reaches opposite conclusions than the ones she was taught as a child.

Fawn marries Bernard Brodie while at the University of Chicago and creates something of a scandal in her family by marrying a "Jew". However, the two are very gifted people and go on to careers in writing and teaching at major universities.

Fawn's other significant book "Thomas Jefferson, an Intimate History" upset other groups because of her conclusions about Jefferson's relationship with his slave, Sally Hemmings. However, these conclusions have since been validated by DNA testing that establishes Jefferson did have children with Ms. Hemmings. Again, we see a pattern. An author that is unafraid to tackle tough subjects.

I was saddened when Fawn developed lung cancer (she never smoked) at age 65 and died within a few months. However, she handled her last days openly and with as much dignity as someone could under the circumstances. I enjoyed this book and found her to be a woman of courage.

Mark

This is a substantial work. The text is clear and readable and the documentation careful and convincing. It can profitably be read by anyone with an interest in the biographer's art or who seeks insights into the history of Mormonism. Most readers will be drawn to the book because of their previous interest in Brodie's ground-breaking biography of Joseph Smith, Jr., No Man Knows My History, published in 1945, or her best-selling Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, published in 1974. Bringhurst is particularly good in delineating the small-town Mormon environment in which Brodie grew up. No Man Knows My History was a remarkable book, in part because it was a precocious work (it was all researched and written when Brodie was still in her twenties), in part because it came from a member of one of Mormondom's most prominent families (her maternal grandfather George H. Brimhall was president of Brigham Young University, her father Thomas E. McKay a prominent LDS elder and Utah public official, and her paternal uncle David O. McKay a long-time member of the Council of the Twelve and President and Prophet of the Church from 1951 to 1970). I was surprised at the extent to which Brodie became a political partisan in her later years (she railed against Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan and praised Stevenson, Kennedy and Carter) and at the venom that motivated her last book, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character, published in 1981. (She was a Nixon hater long before she began to gather material for the book.) I was shocked to learn that she consulted one of Nixon's own doctors while researching this book (a psychoanalyst who treated Nixon for stress in the 1950's) and that the doctor actually answered her questions! It is ironic that she should have been so protective of her own privacy when she invaded the privacy of others with such relish. The animus that animated her Richard Nixon prompted me to reflect on the extent to which No Man Knows My History might also have been animated, in whole or in part, by anti-Smith, anti-McKay, or anti-Mormon animus. It is not a question that Bringhurst addresses directly, but readers may draw their own conclusions.

It's hard to have read any of Fawn Brodie's magnificent and controversial biographies (of Joseph Smith, Sir Richard Burton, Thomas Jefferson, etc) without being drawn to her own story. Newell Bringhurst, who obviously shares much of her background--disaffected Mormon historian with a great respect for the techniques of true writing and research--has written a personal and engaging life of Ms. B. I found she was even more courageous, clear-thinking, and ethical than I had thought her to be. Fawn-ophiles will have to get this book.

If this man had never existed, Hollyweird could do a movie of some of his exploits and it would be considered over the top. He was fully a man both of his era and beyond it. His time in Africa alone was amazing, despite the fact that he and his fellow travelers did not find the source of the Nile river. That said, this is one of the better overall biographies of Sir Burton. The author has a good feel for the overall tone and prejuidices of the era and how Sir Burton did not fit in in polite English society. How much did I like this book, well I had read it years ago and decided I had to have a copy to keep. If true history with all its faults and wonders is something you enjoy, you need to read this book. For all that, I didn't even mention that he was an extraordinarily talented linquist as well as an author.

Soon after graduating from high school many decades ago, it was my good fortune to discover Sir Richard Francis Burton, one of the great explorer/intellects of any age. That was a major turning point in my life. Burton inspired in me passions to achieve beyond the ordinary. Later, I became a scientist and, perhaps because I had imprinted upon Burton at a formative stage of my life, was able to open hitherto unexplored intellectual domains of my own.

I was eager to learn everything I could about Burton. Along the way, I discovered Fawn Brodie's book on Burton, a carefully-researched work that draws upon a wealth of historical data in depicting Burton's life and accomplishments. With a fast-paced, fascinating writing style that impels the reader forward page after page, Brodie takes us through Burton's own early formative years, his adventures in India, his pilgrimages to the forbidden cities of Mecca and Harar, his exploration for the source of the Nile, his rivalry with fellow explorer and nemesis, John Hanning Speke, his marriage to Isabel, and his profound accomplishments as an intellect and writer. Brodie's is a masterful work that compelled me to reread it many times down through the years. In fact, I read it so many times that it finally fell apart. I was delighted to find it for sale on Amazon, and recently purchased a new copy to replace the tattered old companion.

Those who wish to learn about Burton from a renowned scholar and historian are likely to treasure Brodie's book that has received many splendid reviews.

Soon after graduating from high school many decades ago, it was my good fortune to discover Sir Richard Francis Burton, one of the great explorer/intellects of any age. That was a major turning point in my life. Burton inspired in me passions to achieve beyond the ordinary. Later, I became a scientist and, perhaps because I had imprinted upon Burton at a formative stage of my life, was able to open hitherto unexplored intellectual domains of my own.

I was eager to learn everything I could about Burton. Along the way, I discovered Fawn Brodie's book on Burton, a carefully-researched work that draws upon a wealth of historical data in depicting Burton's life and accomplishments. With a fast-paced, fascinating writing style that impels the reader forward page after page, Brodie takes us through Burton's own early formative years, his adventures in India, his pilgrimages to the forbidden cities of Mecca and Harar, his exploration for the source of the Nile, his rivalry with fellow explorer and nemesis, John Hanning Speke, his marriage to Isabel, and his profound accomplishments as an intellect and writer. Brodie's is a masterful work that compelled me to reread it many times down through the years. In fact, I read it so many times that it finally fell apart. I was delighted to find it for sale on Amazon, and recently purchased a new copy to replace the tattered old companion.

Those who wish to learn about Burton from a renowned scholar and historian are likely to treasure Brodie's book that has received many splendid reviews.

...

Yes, buy and read this book. You can see from the reviews that it is controversial. Reading controversial literature generally makes people more well rounded.

The controversy doesn't revolve around the merits of the book. Any book that touches a religious theme has the same source of antagonism. A large number of people reading the history of Joseph Smith are doing so to ask the question: Was Smith truly the divine relevator of God or was he a charlatan?

Such controversies are always mysteries.

Accurate historical and scientific research has a wreckless history of messing with beliefs based on revelation. Look at the job that Copernicus did on the Catholic Church with his little diagrams suggesting the earth was round.

Ms. Brodie was a faithful member of the LDS Church who changed her mind on this issue while doing her historical research. Yes, she is an apostate. She brings to the surface many of the facts that led to her conclusions.

Of course, it should be noted that she is researching in a field where others have done twisting of facts to cast Smith as a living saint.

Over all, it appears to be an extremely well researched work in a field where all of the research is questionable in nature. If you are interested in LDS or Utah history, I would strongly recommend the book.

If your are wanting to read the accepted version of Joseph Smith's life, I would recommend reading The Work and The Glory by Gerald Lund.

If you enjoy learning, I would pick up Brodie's book, it is far more interesting.

A well-researched and documented book. Ms. Brodie did much of her research in the Mormon Church's archives and library, and because David O McKay (a former president of the Mormon Church) was her uncle, she had access to documents that other researchers did not. This biography portrays Joseph Smith (the founder of Mormonism) as a fraud, a con-man, and a seducer of women. For instance, Brodie documents how Joseph Smith defrauded his church members in the Kirtland Anti-Banking scandal, swindling them of their money and their land. Brodie also documents how he sent various men on church missions and seduced their wives while they were away. These are just two examples of frauds Smith perpetrated. The book is controversial because many Mormons feel that the book is an attack on their church founder, and they claim that it is bad history. Ms. Brodie attempted to enter the mind of her subject and explain what motivated Joseph Smith, in this regard she crosses the line between history and psycho-analysis. An excellent read.

I've consummed a library of books on Mormon studies, and had held off on reading "No Man Knows My History" because I had already read a considerable quantity of biographical material on Joseph Smith. I capitulated at last only because it is among the most well known books on early Mormon history. I am so glad I did. No book could have pulled it all together and made sense of it all as well as Fawn Brodie's book. It is as valuable today as it was when it was first written over half a century ago. None of the objective scholarship of recent years contradicts her conclusions, but rather validates her, page after page after page. Her insight is piercing, her style is almost poetic, and her message is powerful.

It is not any easy book for a Mormon to read, as is evidenced by some of the reactionary attacks Brodie receives in some of the reviews already written. The faithful do not want to hear that Joseph Smith was an "evolutionary revolutionary," his doctrine growing with his ego and sense of personal magnificence. But this is no mean swipe at the character of Joseph Smith...if anything, you come away with a sense of awe at the creative genius, the charismatic giant that he must have been. If he brought scorn and violence upon himself and his people, it was a measure of the power he produced and the fear that he struck in lesser men with whom he shared his time and space. Nevertheless, Brodie's exploration of the world of Joseph Smith and the context within which his doctrine evolved is brilliant. She is adept at recognizing the role that projection has played throughout his career, beginning with the Book of Mormon, and continuing on through all of his other writings, including the History of the Church. Ms. Brodie says it best herself in the opening lines of Chapter 19: "A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become." Or as is so often the case, "less what a man was than what he wished he had become." To one who has studied the role of paradigms in shaping the way we interpret our world, Brodie's book makes the most beautiful sense. To one who's faith is at stake, however, her book may serve to threaten the idylic, heroic legend of Joseph Smith that has been carefully nurtured since his murder in 1844.

This is among the finest pieces of historical literature I have had the priveledge of reading. Her scholarship and writing and fearless approach to tackle controversial issues with objectivity and sensitivity is matched only by Juanita Brooks in the realm of Mormon studies. This is a book not just to read, but to consume.

It is nice now that more than fifty years has transpired since "No Man Knows My History" was first published to take a look backwards. I was struck by the fact that most of the essays that Mr. Bringhurst published in this book were generally supportive of Fawn Brodie's scholarship. Some questioned certain sections of her book.

One particularly insightful essay challenged much of what she wrote on the matter of polygamy as it was being practiced by the Mormons in Nauvoo just prior to Joseph Smith's murder and subsequent Martyrdom. The essayist pointed out that while some of the specific information that Fawn Brodie may have gathered on this question may have been incorrect, her general conclusions about the practices going on in Nauvoo, were almost certainly correct. This is a particularly difficult issue to investigate. A secret practice occurring within a religious organization some 100 years prior to the time a book is written. It hardly seems surprising that even the best author might get some of the facts wrong. Its too Fawn Brodie's credit, that she got the general picture correct.

One essay that I found disappointing was much ado over nothing. The writer dealt with certain literary methods she felt Fawn Brodie used in writing her book. She suggested these were the methods of a fiction or literature writer, and not a historian. Actually, while Fawn Brodie was a history professor at UCLA, she got initial college degrees in English and in Literature. Fawn clearly had a talent many historians don't.....the ability to write a well-researched book in a manner that is interesting and readable by people outside academia. Something that that particular author that essay probably lacks herself.

Bringhurst himself includes an essay which was later part of his book on Fawn Brodie, "A Biographer's Life" that describes Fawn's early life, the immense amount of research and effort she put into the book, the reaction of the LDS Church to her research efforts, her attempts to explain the book to her Orthodox LDS family, and her subsequent excommunication which was probably largely orchestrated by her uncle, and subsequent President of the LDS Church, David O. McKay. There is alot of insightful material here which it would be nice for anyone reading "No Man Knows My History" to be able to examine.

Most of the essays are good. I recommend this book.

One Hundred (and one) years after the Mormon prophet's demise in Nauvoo, Fawn Mckay Brodie had completed a biography of him. This work on Joseph Smith's life has within certain communities has been received both with high priase and acclaim as well as severe condemnation. This controversy alone has raised the status of the book amongst historical, socialogical and literary reviewers. Newell G. Bringhurst brings this dynamic alive with a selection of essays about Brodie's offering from a variety of critical and careful perspectives.

The focus of this collection is not to examine the actual biography of Smith and its validity, rather it is about Brodie's work. Many of the relevant issues discussed about a task as she achieved are brought to light by the various essays: how meticulous was her research, the literary style are prose of the work, the reliability of her sources, the consistency of the work, the conclusions her work leads to, etc. All these were carefully examined by a number of the essayists. Furthermore, the character of Brodie was considered, i.e. her sense of purpose and accomplishment, perhaps her sense of duty. There are amongst each of the essays remarkable insights into both the work on a scholarly level and into the woman who created it all.

The synopsis of the collection as a whole is widespread praise for Brodie's ground-breaking effort. She has treaded into a life with such incredible care and insight which few have since unsuccessfully attempted to match. The biographer is given the credit she desrved with "No Man Knows My History" and later solidly earned with her other works.

I recommend this strongly for those who have an interest in examining historical research and particularly those interested in Brodie's research. For those interested in Mormon research, I suggest both this "Reconsidering..." and Brodie's biography be read concurrently or at least in succession.

Newell Bringhurst, a highly-qualified Mormon historian who is not active in the church, has assembled an interesting and balanced set of essays about Fawn Brodie's extremely important book on Joseph Smith. Devout Mormons reject her work out-of-hand (much of the time, I fear, without reading it--the Church has told them not to). But real historians are not fearful of research and of facts. This is the basis for this collection. The best essay is Bringhurst's own, which gives a clear picture of the difficulties Fawn B. encountered when researching the book, as well as an analysis of the validity of her methods. In spite of heavy indoctrination by family and community, Fawn B. managed to develop a clarity of sight and and desire to penetrate myths and propaganda that made all of her works important and unignorable by future writers on their subjects. The "pro-Mormon" essays in this collection, interestingly, tend to be the most bombastic and evasive--much like the master of apologist irrelevance, Hugh Nibley. Like a good historian, Bringhurst provides the evidence and leaves it to the reader's intelligence to evaluate it for himself--the exact opposite of what Mormon authorities do.

Brodie's book captured attention when it was originally published, in 1974, because it was the first scholarly treatment of Jefferson to take seriously the claim that Sally Hemings was Jefferson's concubine. The book is far more than that, though, as it is a comprehensive biography of Jefferson. The book was also notable because of its emphasis on "psychohistory," at the time a young or nonexistent field. Reading it now, though, it seems remarkable neither for its emphasis on Jefferson's relationship with Hemings nor for its emphasis on his psyche.

Brodie's evidence for a relationship between Jefferson and Hemings is weak. It is based largely on speculation and imaginative interpretations of historical documents. The book does not use the relationship between Hemings and Jefferson as a basis for a critical look at Jefferson. On the whole, the book portrays Jefferson in a sympathetic light. Brodie is critical of him for not doing more to advance the cause of emancipation, but even in this respect she writes of him empathetically. He had made a serious effort earlier in his life and apparently chose not to pursue it more strongly later on practical grounds; he did not believe there was support for it. He believed slavery was wrong, though, and also was convinced that it would die a natural death as time went on.

The book portrays Jefferson as a romantic, as not only an idealist but also a person of great passion. He of course thought of himself as a supremely rational person and kept his emotions under tight control. But it was a constant struggle for him, as evidenced in his migraines, his head and heart letter to Maria Cosway, his extreme depression after the death of his wife, etc.

Brodie argues that Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana is not always sufficiently credited for how remarkable an achievement it was. Nations prior to that had expanded almost always through conquest rather than through an outright purchase. And she argues, convincingly, that had someone like Hamilton or Burr been President, we would have gone to war with France over possession of the territory. Brodie believes that Jefferson's greatest accomplishments as President were the purchase of Louisiana and the Lewis and Clark Expedition--both of which, of course, had to do with the expansion of the country.

The book stills holds its own as a good general introduction to Jefferson's life.

And I don't mean that in a bad way. This was the first biography I read about Jefferson and a dozen or so books later I still think it's one of the best. Brodie brings warmth, passion, and humanity to her subject. Yes, she gets important facts wrong, speculates wildly, and at times misses her target. I think the Jefferson she describes, though, is closer to the real man than the portraits which can be found in stodgier biographies. It's not academic history but it's not fiction either. Read it for her take on the spirit of the man. Btw, the DNA evidence which was presented in the journal "Nature" two years ago disproved Brodie's speculations about an affair between Jefferson and Hemmings in Paris (which was was also turned into a popular movie). Two lines of descent were tested. The one linked to Paris didn't pan out. If Jefferson and Hemmings had children together this relationship probably started later.

I have read this book several times over the past ten years, and referred back to it after reading biographies by others who often slander Ms. Brodies work. It is an excellent portrait of what Mr. Jefferson may have been like, both flattering and not so flattering, but always fascinating. I always enjoy it because it captures so many people around Jefferson so well, such as his mentor George Wythe and his father-in-law John Wayles, both who took a slave concubine after becoming widowers. This book is about relationships and their social times.

Ms. Brodie weighed in on Jefferson being the father of Sally Hemming's children when it was not popular to taint him with human emotions. She would be proved right on at least one of Ms. Hemming's children, Eston, being fathered by the same Y chromosome that Jefferson's own father carried. Unfortunately Ms. Brodie did not live to see the scientific vindication of her research and insight. The Jefferson family has long claimed that Sally's children who favored Jefferson were fathered by nephew Samuel Carr, Jefferson's sister Martha's son. But Sam couldn't pass that Jefferson Y chromosome!

This book is a must read for everyone who is interested in understanding the Sage of Montecello. It makes the world of Jefferson come to life and allow the reader to walk in the times of his day, his friendships, enemies, depressions, joys, trials, and triumphs. Brodie takes the time to richly describe the other individuals in Jefferson's life, there by providing to the reader great scholarship that is immensely personal and interesting.

No single book can capture Jefferson's philosophy and accomplishments; but this book is a must read for a study of the personality of one of the most complex and interesting men in the history of our civilization.

It is the most fun book on Jefferson and his times that one can read.