William Adam Reed's Reviews > The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher

It took me a while to get through this bad boy. I kept starting and stopping for a variety of reasons. Then when I got to the mid-way point, I decided to barrel into it and then I was able to finish the second half pretty rapidly.
Beecher is a compelling figure. I was interested in the way that people reacted to him. He was a true celebrity of his time period. Appelgate presents him with all his flaws laid out before the reader. The saying that "Pride goes before a fall" is pretty true of Beecher. It was interesting to hear about the dynamics of the Beecher family itself, the siblings made their mark on the intellectual landscape of American life in the mid 1800's. Appelgate knows her subject very well and it is a well written biography. I learned a lot and enjoyed reading it.
I would also say that Beecher's affair with Elizabeth Tilton is the main reason that he is not as well remembered today as he otherwise would have been. There are a lot of famous people that pass through Beecher's life and it is interesting to see how this man impacted history.