The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher

Debby Applegate’s biography follows the life of the 19th-century American minister Henry Ward Beecher. It opens with his speech at Fort Sumter at the close of the Civil War, which he gave at Abraham Lincoln’s personal invitation. The book then covers his sometimes difficult childhood, his ministry, his support for the abolition of slavery and other social causes, and his widely publicised trial for adultery in 1875. Applegate researched and wrote about Beecher for twenty years before publishing it.