You can search for it, but you can't reserve it. They're not even listing any "on shelf" or "in transit."

I hope the copies haven't "disappeared."

(BTW: Books the library have have descriptions. Ones they don't have aren't searchable. Yet, I can search for "No Many Knows My History," but there isn't a copy to be found in my city's catalog. *rollseyes*)

I actually have seen the odd copy or two at more than one Deseret Industries. Generally beat up with dusty spine, but even so, it's the book. Look there? possibility.

I bought it off Amazon 2 years ago.

cl2 Wrote:
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> I bought it off Amazon 2 years ago.


I just wanted to check it out and read it...I've been hearing about how pivotal this book has been for people who have left TSCC.

I was reading through Amazon.com reviews and naturally selected the one-star reviews to read. Their main criticism (at least the criticism they put down) was that it was written like a novel and that the author was inferring what went on in Smith's head. Having not read that book, and maybe they're exaggerating this, but I could totally see their point. I'm more of a gimme-the-facts reader.

I used to be an avid reader, but for some reason I can only get through about half a book anymore and I quit reading. BUT my nonmo boyfriend read it fairly quickly and he really liked it and found it very informative.

The thing I did like about it was that it was written like a novel--and it gave the day to day type info you don't get from something with only facts. It gave you insight into why Joseph did what he did when he did--the background story.

I hope others respond to this thread--as a lot of the people here have read it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/05/2013 10:30AM by cl2.

Fawn Brodie's book is easily obtainable on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/No-Man-Knows-My-History/dp/0679730540

In each chapter Professor Brodie lays out and references the facts as they were known in 1945. The years have not been kind to Mormon truth claims so if anything the evidence has become much stronger since Brodie completed her work.

At the end of each chapter she summarizes and then in my opinion creates a chink in her armour by theorizing conclusions. I wish she had separated fact from her theory a little better. In each case I believe she gives the most logical explanation but there is always that little gap between what we know to be fact and then what she puts for as conclusions. In each case she's probably right, but it does create that window for TBM's to criticize.

All of the above plus - she tends to put thoughts/ascribe motives to Smith when there is little or no basis for what she posits. She may be right, she may be wrong, but the book would have been better without this device.

I bought this book on Amazon a year and a half ago. I really enjoyed. I agree with the criticism that the author puts thoughts into J.S. head but there is still lots and lots of meat to her research. It's a great book to own.

I've heard the same thing about Bushman's writing...he puts thoughts into Joseph's head, speculates, etc...

This is my main problem with fairlds...they have no answers, they don't dispute facts for the most part, they just speculate...."well, maybe God needed Joe to be a pervert for his special purposes that we can't understand in this life..."

"No Man Knows My History" is an amazing book in that all the important information is there and it was written when? In the 50s?

When I was reading it, I was aware that Fawn McKay Brodie would not have been allowed to editorialize and invent (people's thoughts) the way she did if she were to write the book now but, ultimately, it did not matter to me because the basic information was there.

I was astounded that I could have learned all I needed to know about the church years and years ago rather than learning it on the Internet years later.

Brodie wrote psychobiographies.

"In the view of students of historiography such as Ernst Breisach, all biographers are to some degree psychohistorians, and any biography that refused to examine motives, character traits, and the depth of personality would be flat and uninteresting.[33] But Brodie became interested in applying the theories of professional psychoanalysts to the study of historical personalities, a subject especially popular during the mid-twentieth century."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawn_M._Brodie