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==About this work==
{{To learn more box:responses to: Fawn Brodie}]
{{H1
|L=Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith
|H=No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith
|S=
|L1=
|T=No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith
|A=Fawn Brodie
|<=
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}}
<onlyinclude>
{{H2
|L=Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith
|H=Response to claims made in ''No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith'' by Fawn Brodie
|S=Louis Midgley: "Though Fawn McKay Brodie forged a reputation as a controversial psychohistorian, it is her 1945 biography of Joseph Smith for which she has always been known among Latter-day Saints. She thought of herself, and has been portrayed by cultural Mormons, as an "objective" historian who had taken the measure of "the Mormon prophet." Her death on 10 January 1981 was followed by tributes in which she was depicted as a heroic figure who had courageously liberated herself from bondage to the mind-numbing religious orthodoxy of her parochial childhood and who had thereby set in place among Latter-day Saints what one of her admirers called "a new climate of liberation." Fawn McKay Brodie: A Biographer's Life—the latest and most comprehensive of these tributes to Brodie—constitutes a substantial addition to the tiny academic specialty that might be called 'Brodie studies'."<ref>Louis Midgley, [https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1453&index=3 "The Legend and Legacy of Fawn Brodie,"] ''FARMS Review of Books'' 13:1 (2001).</ref>
|L1=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 2: Treasure in the Earth"
|L2=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 3: Red Sons of Israel"
|L3=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 4: A Marvelous Work and a Wonder"
|L4=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 5: Witnesses for God"
|L5=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 6: The Prophet of Palmyra"
|L6=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 7: The Perfect Society and the Promised Land"
|L7=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 8: Temple Builder"
|L8=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 9: Expulsion from Eden"
|L9=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 10: The Army of the Lord"
|L10=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 11: Patronage and Punishment"
|L11=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 12: Master of Languages"
|L12=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 13: My Kingdom is of this World"
|L13=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 14: Disaster in Kirtland"
|L14=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 15: The Valley of God"
|L15=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 16: The Alcoran or the Sword"
|L16=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 17: Ordeal in Liberty Jail"
|L17=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 18: Nauvoo"
|L18=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 19: Mysteries of the Kingdom"
|L19=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 20: In the Quiver of the Almighty"
|L20=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 21: If a Man Entice a Maid"
|L21=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 22: The Bennett Explosion"
|L22=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 23: Into Hiding"
|L23=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 24: The Wives of the Prophet"
|L24=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 25: Candidate for President"
|L25=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 26: Prelude to Destruction"
|L26=Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 27: Carthage"
|L27=Hugh W. Nibley, "No, Ma'am, That's Not History"
|L28=Louis Midgley, "F. M. Brodie--"The Fasting Hermit and Very Saint of Ignorance": A Biographer and Her Legend"
|L29=Louis Midgley, "Comments on Critical Exchanges"
|L30=Gary F. Novak, ""The Most Convenient Form of Error": Dale Morgan on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon"
|L31=BYU Studies, "Exploding the Myth About Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet"
|L32=BYU Studies, "The Brodie Connection: Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Smith"
}}
</onlyinclude>
{{ChartBrodieSummary}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 2}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 3}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 4}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 5}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 6}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 7}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 8}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 9}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 10}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 11}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 12}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 13}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 14}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 15}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 16}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 17}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 18}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 19}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 20}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 21}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 22}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 23}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 24}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 25}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 26}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 27}}


Author: [[Fawn McKay Brodie]]
:Brodie's Joseph Smith is a more plausible character than the consummate fiend of the earlier school in that his type is much more likely to be met with on the street any Tuesday afternoon. But he is actually much less plausible as the man who accomplished what Joseph Smith did. Some kind of an inspired super-devil might have gotten away with some of the things he did, but no blundering, dreaming, undisciplined, shallow and opportunistic fakir could have left behind what Joseph Smith did, both in men's hearts and on paper.
: &mdash; Hugh Nibley, ''No Ma'am, That's Not History''
==Claims made in this work==
A list of claims indexed by page number made in ''No Man Knows My History'' with links to the corresponding responses in the FAIRwiki may be found here: [[No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Index|Index to claims made in ''No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith'']].
==Quote mining, selective quotation and distortion==
{| valign="top" border="1" style="width:100%; font-size:85%"
!Quote used...!!The rest of the story...
|-
| style="width:50%" valign="top"| '''The prophecy was quietly abandoned''' and excluded from early collections of Joseph's revelations. '''It was not exhumed from his private papers until nineteen years later''', when Brigham Young, seeing the whirlwind hour darkening, ordered its publication. After the Civil War it became the most celebrated of all of Joseph's predictions. ||
I went forth before my beard was gray, before my hair began to turn white, '''when I was a youth of nineteen''', now I am fifty-eight, and from that time on I published these tidings among the inhabitants of the earth. '''I carried forth the written revelation, foretelling this great contest, some twenty-eight years before the war commenced. This prophecy has been printed and circulated extensively in this and other nations and languages.''' It pointed out the place where it should commence in South Carolina. That which I declared over the New England States, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and many other parts in the East, when but a boy, came to pass twenty-eight years after the revelation was given.
When they were talking about a war commencing down here in Kansas, I told them that was not the place; I also told them that the revelation had designated South Carolina, "and," said I, "you have no need to think that the Kansas war is going to be the war that is to be so terribly destructive in its character and nature. No, it must commence at the place the Lord has designated by revelation."
What did they have to say to me? They thought it was a Mormon humbug, and laughed me to scorn, and they looked upon that revelation as they do upon all others that God has given in these latter days—as without divine authority. But behold and lo! in process of time it came to pass, again establishing the divinity of this work, and giving another proof that God is in this work, and is performing that which He spoke by the mouths of the ancient prophets, as recorded in the Book of Mormon before any Church of Latter-day Saints was in existence.
|-
|valign="top"|
* ''No Man Knows My History'', p. 124.
||
* Orson Pratt, "The Latter-day Kingdom of God, etc." ''Journal of Discourses'', Vol. 13, p. 135. April 10, 1870.
|-
|}
'''Commentary'''
* Orson Pratt indicates that not only did he preach regarding Joseph's prophesy in 1832, but that he was ridiculed for it. This is not consistent with Brodie's claim that the prophecy was "quietly abandoned" until the Civil War made it expedient to resurrect it.
{{parabreak}}
==Endnotes==


==Reviews of this work==
==Reviews of this work==
* {{FR-8-2-10}}
{{MaxwellInstituteBar
* {{FR-13-1-3}}
|link=https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/93/
* {{FR-13-1-7}}
|title=No, Ma'am, That's Not History
* {{NoMa'am0}}
|author=Hugh W. Nibley
* {{FR-8-1-13}}
|publication=Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass
|date=1991
|summary=Brodie's Joseph Smith is a more plausible character than the consummate fiend of the earlier school in that his type is much more likely to be met with on the street any Tuesday afternoon. But he is actually much less plausible as the man who accomplished what Joseph Smith did. Some kind of an inspired super-devil might have gotten away with some of the things he did, but no blundering, dreaming, undisciplined, shallow and opportunistic fakir could have left behind what Joseph Smith did, both in men's hearts and on paper.
}}


==Further reading==
{{MaxwellInstituteBar
===FAIR web site===
|link=https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol8/iss2/11/
*{{tg|url=http://www.fairlds.org/apol/ai202.html|topic=Brodie, Fawn}}
|title=F. M. Brodie--"The Fasting Hermit and Very Saint of Ignorance": A Biographer and Her Legend
|author=Louis Midgley
|publication=FARMS Review of Books
|vol=8
|num=2
|date=1996
|summary=Fawn McKay Brodie's adroitly fashioned biography of Joseph Smith was released to the public on 22 November 1945--over fifty years ago. No Man Knows My History6 was republished as a paperback in 1995. This most recent appearance of Brodie's book provides an occasion for a close look at the history of the controversy her work engendered. There are, I believe, important lessons to be learned from the debate, scholarly and otherwise, that has subsequently taken place over the soundness of her book. I will not examine in detail criticisms made by faithful Latter-day Saints, but will focus on the commentary about and subsequent debate over Brodie's biography.
}}
{{MaxwellInstituteBar
|link=https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol13/iss1/4/
|title=The Legend and Legacy of Fawn Brodie
|author=Louis Midgley
|publication=FARMS Review of Books
|vol=13
|num=1
|date=2001
|summary=Though Fawn McKay Brodie2 forged a reputation as a controversial psychohistorian, it is her 1945 biography of Joseph Smith3 for which she has always been known among Latter-day Saints. She thought of herself, and has been portrayed by cultural Mormons, as an "objective" historian4 who had taken the measure of "the Mormon prophet." Her death on 10 January 1981 was followed by tributes in which she was depicted as a heroic figure who had courageously liberated herself from bondage to the mind-numbing religious orthodoxy of her parochial childhood and who had thereby set in place among Latter-day Saints what one of her admirers called "a new climate of liberation."5 Fawn McKay Brodie: A Biographer's Life—the latest and most comprehensive of these tributes to Brodie—constitutes a substantial addition to the tiny academic specialty that might be called "Brodie studies."
}}
{{MaxwellInstituteBar
|link=https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol13/iss1/8/
|title=Comments on Critical Exchanges
|author=Louis Midgley
|publication=FARMS Review of Books
|vol=13
|num=1
|date=2001
|summary=To see what Glen Hettinger is attempting to accomplish by publishing his critique of me, I believe that an awareness of the larger context of the conversation about Joseph Smith's prophetic truth claims, in which Hettinger's essay plays a polemical role, is needed. Since he is attacking me, this must include an indication of why I have given any attention at all to Fawn Brodie and what that attention has actually consisted of.
}}
{{MaxwellInstituteBar
|link=https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol8/iss1/14/
|title="The Most Convenient Form of Error": Dale Morgan on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon
|author=Gary F. Novak
|publication=FARMS Review of Books
|vol=8
|num=1
|date=1996
|summary=I first heard of Dale Lowell Morgan in the spring of 1980. The previous fall, Louis Midgley had published "The Brodie Connection: Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Smith,"3 in which he reported what many of the Jefferson experts had to say in the seventies about Fawn M. Brodie's Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Biography and then noted that many of their criticisms were very similar to what Mormons, especially Hugh Nibley, had been saying in the forties about her No Man Knows My History.4 Kent L. Walgren5 had written to Louis Midgley to complain that "The Brodie Connection" "should be required reading for students of the non sequitur: If scholars can find problems with Thomas Jefferson, there must also be serious problems with No Man."6 Walgren indicated that he thought "No Man has remained impenetrable all these years not so much because of Ms. Brodie's genius as because she had available to her a resource more valuable than any library in the world: Dale Morgan."7 Although Walgren claimed that Morgan helped Brodie by providing source material and by reading her manuscript, he did not demonstrate how that sort of help made her book "impenetrable."
}}
{{BYUStudiesBar
|link=https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol8/iss2/13/
|title=Exploding the Myth About Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet
|author=Richard L. Anderson
|vol=8
|num=2
|date=Winter 1968
|summary= F. L. Stewart (Lori Donegan) has educated herself in the sources of Mormon history simply through making a hobby of carefully checking Brodie’s documentation. Such a project is less a question of ideology than a fairly objective determination of whether the footnote citations of No Man Knows My History really support its thesis. Because this double-checking may be done on a broader scale, Stewart’s work is a valuable pilot study of the validity of Brodie’s generalizations.
}}


===FAIR wiki articles===
{{BYUStudiesBar
{{SpecificAuthorsAndWorks}}
|link=https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol20/iss1/4/
|title=The Brodie Connection: Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Smith
|author=Louis C. Midgley
|vol=20
|num=1
|date=Fall 1979
|summary=Those outside the Church often think they have the objective explanation for Joseph Smith in Fawn McKay Brodie's No Man Knows My History. Mormons' complaints about her treatment of the Joseph Smith story are either unknown or brushed aside as biased special pleading. But recently something has happened that has called into question - Ms. Brodie's previously towering reputation as a scholar: she has written another book which has turned into an academic scandal.
}}
{{endnotes sources}}

Latest revision as of 04:56, 12 May 2024


{{To learn more box:responses to: Fawn Brodie}]

No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith



A FAIR Analysis of: No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, a work by author: Fawn Brodie

Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith by Fawn Brodie

Summary: Louis Midgley: "Though Fawn McKay Brodie forged a reputation as a controversial psychohistorian, it is her 1945 biography of Joseph Smith for which she has always been known among Latter-day Saints. She thought of herself, and has been portrayed by cultural Mormons, as an "objective" historian who had taken the measure of "the Mormon prophet." Her death on 10 January 1981 was followed by tributes in which she was depicted as a heroic figure who had courageously liberated herself from bondage to the mind-numbing religious orthodoxy of her parochial childhood and who had thereby set in place among Latter-day Saints what one of her admirers called "a new climate of liberation." Fawn McKay Brodie: A Biographer's Life—the latest and most comprehensive of these tributes to Brodie—constitutes a substantial addition to the tiny academic specialty that might be called 'Brodie studies'."[1]


Jump to details:

Claim Evaluation
No Man Knows My History

Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 2: Treasure in the Earth"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 3: Red Sons of Israel"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 4: A Marvelous Work and a Wonder"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 5: Witnesses for God"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 6: The Prophet of Palmyra"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 7: The Perfect Society and the Promised Land"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 8: Temple Builder"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 9: Expulsion from Eden"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 10: The Army of the Lord"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 11: Patronage and Punishment"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 12: Master of Languages"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 13: My Kingdom is of this World"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 14: Disaster in Kirtland"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 15: The Valley of God"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 16: The Alcoran or the Sword"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 17: Ordeal in Liberty Jail"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 18: Nauvoo"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 19: Mysteries of the Kingdom"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 20: In the Quiver of the Almighty"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 21: If a Man Entice a Maid"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 22: The Bennett Explosion"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 23: Into Hiding"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 24: The Wives of the Prophet"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 25: Candidate for President"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 26: Prelude to Destruction"


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in No Man Knows My History, "Chapter 27: Carthage"


Jump to details:


Reviews of this work

Hugh W. Nibley, "No, Ma'am, That's Not History"

Hugh W. Nibley,  Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass, (1991)

Brodie's Joseph Smith is a more plausible character than the consummate fiend of the earlier school in that his type is much more likely to be met with on the street any Tuesday afternoon. But he is actually much less plausible as the man who accomplished what Joseph Smith did. Some kind of an inspired super-devil might have gotten away with some of the things he did, but no blundering, dreaming, undisciplined, shallow and opportunistic fakir could have left behind what Joseph Smith did, both in men's hearts and on paper.

Click here to view the complete article

Louis Midgley, "F. M. Brodie--"The Fasting Hermit and Very Saint of Ignorance": A Biographer and Her Legend"

Louis Midgley,  FARMS Review of Books, (1996)

Fawn McKay Brodie's adroitly fashioned biography of Joseph Smith was released to the public on 22 November 1945--over fifty years ago. No Man Knows My History6 was republished as a paperback in 1995. This most recent appearance of Brodie's book provides an occasion for a close look at the history of the controversy her work engendered. There are, I believe, important lessons to be learned from the debate, scholarly and otherwise, that has subsequently taken place over the soundness of her book. I will not examine in detail criticisms made by faithful Latter-day Saints, but will focus on the commentary about and subsequent debate over Brodie's biography.

Click here to view the complete article

Louis Midgley, "The Legend and Legacy of Fawn Brodie"

Louis Midgley,  FARMS Review of Books, (2001)

Though Fawn McKay Brodie2 forged a reputation as a controversial psychohistorian, it is her 1945 biography of Joseph Smith3 for which she has always been known among Latter-day Saints. She thought of herself, and has been portrayed by cultural Mormons, as an "objective" historian4 who had taken the measure of "the Mormon prophet." Her death on 10 January 1981 was followed by tributes in which she was depicted as a heroic figure who had courageously liberated herself from bondage to the mind-numbing religious orthodoxy of her parochial childhood and who had thereby set in place among Latter-day Saints what one of her admirers called "a new climate of liberation."5 Fawn McKay Brodie: A Biographer's Life—the latest and most comprehensive of these tributes to Brodie—constitutes a substantial addition to the tiny academic specialty that might be called "Brodie studies."

Click here to view the complete article

Louis Midgley, "Comments on Critical Exchanges"

Louis Midgley,  FARMS Review of Books, (2001)

To see what Glen Hettinger is attempting to accomplish by publishing his critique of me, I believe that an awareness of the larger context of the conversation about Joseph Smith's prophetic truth claims, in which Hettinger's essay plays a polemical role, is needed. Since he is attacking me, this must include an indication of why I have given any attention at all to Fawn Brodie and what that attention has actually consisted of.

Click here to view the complete article

Gary F. Novak, ""The Most Convenient Form of Error": Dale Morgan on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon"

Gary F. Novak,  FARMS Review of Books, (1996)

I first heard of Dale Lowell Morgan in the spring of 1980. The previous fall, Louis Midgley had published "The Brodie Connection: Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Smith,"3 in which he reported what many of the Jefferson experts had to say in the seventies about Fawn M. Brodie's Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Biography and then noted that many of their criticisms were very similar to what Mormons, especially Hugh Nibley, had been saying in the forties about her No Man Knows My History.4 Kent L. Walgren5 had written to Louis Midgley to complain that "The Brodie Connection" "should be required reading for students of the non sequitur: If scholars can find problems with Thomas Jefferson, there must also be serious problems with No Man."6 Walgren indicated that he thought "No Man has remained impenetrable all these years not so much because of Ms. Brodie's genius as because she had available to her a resource more valuable than any library in the world: Dale Morgan."7 Although Walgren claimed that Morgan helped Brodie by providing source material and by reading her manuscript, he did not demonstrate how that sort of help made her book "impenetrable."

Click here to view the complete article

BYU Studies, "Exploding the Myth About Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet"

Richard L. Anderson,  BYU Studies 8/2 (Winter 1968)

F. L. Stewart (Lori Donegan) has educated herself in the sources of Mormon history simply through making a hobby of carefully checking Brodie’s documentation. Such a project is less a question of ideology than a fairly objective determination of whether the footnote citations of No Man Knows My History really support its thesis. Because this double-checking may be done on a broader scale, Stewart’s work is a valuable pilot study of the validity of Brodie’s generalizations.

Click here to view the complete article

BYU Studies, "The Brodie Connection: Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Smith"

Louis C. Midgley,  BYU Studies 20/1 (Fall 1979)

Those outside the Church often think they have the objective explanation for Joseph Smith in Fawn McKay Brodie's No Man Knows My History. Mormons' complaints about her treatment of the Joseph Smith story are either unknown or brushed aside as biased special pleading. But recently something has happened that has called into question - Ms. Brodie's previously towering reputation as a scholar: she has written another book which has turned into an academic scandal.

Click here to view the complete article

Notes (click to expand)
Back to Top
  1. ↑ Louis Midgley, "The Legend and Legacy of Fawn Brodie," FARMS Review of Books 13:1 (2001).
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