![]() ![]() ![]() When I first read the book over thirty years ago I must have read the 1945 edition. Opening up, as she did, a new and professional dimension to the study of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, led first to her excommunication and then to her depiction by the hierarchy as the Anti-Christ. For that reason Fawn Brodie produced what must be regarded as a seminal work. But the important point is that Brodie's is the work of a historian which presents plausible possible ways of viewing Smith's life and work which is not dictated by the exigencies of Mormon proselytisation. Committed Mormons may dispute much of the author's evidence as Hugh Nibley, famously did in `No Ma'am, That's not History', and people can argue till the cows come home about who is right and who isn't. Fawn Brodie changed all that in 1945 with her `No Man knows my History', which was a first serious attempt by a professional historian to understand the Mormon prophet within his context, and in a manner which did not depend on accepting his supernatural experiences in the terms in which they have been described by Smith and his followers. For a very long time the only biographies of Joseph Smith or of Mormonism were either hagiographic, or else deeply cynical depictions of the founder as a charlatan. ![]()
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