Fawn Brodie was thirty years old when she blew up her life. In 1945, a young mother and scholar released a biography that didn't just ruffle feathers—it plucked the whole bird. She titled it No Man Knows My History, a phrase she snatched directly from a funeral sermon Joseph Smith gave for a man named King Follett. It’s a haunting title. It suggests a secret, a depth that nobody can quite reach, and for the last eighty years, it has acted as the definitive "line in the sand" for anyone trying to understand the founder of Mormonism.
People don't just "read" this book. They wrestle with it. They hide it under their pillows or throw it across the room in a fit of rage.
The Woman Behind the Curtain
Brodie wasn't some outsider looking to throw stones. She grew up in the heart of the faith, the niece of David O. McKay, who eventually became the President of the LDS Church. This wasn't a drive-by hit piece. It was an inside job, written with the precision of a surgeon and the emotional weight of a family tragedy. Honestly, that’s why it hurts so many people even today. When you read her prose, you aren't just getting dates and locations. You’re getting a psychological profile of a man she believed was a "mythmaker" of extraordinary talent.
She argued that Joseph Smith wasn't just a prophet or a fraud, but a deliberate creator of his own legend who adapted his revelations to fit his current problems. If he needed a way to justify a new marriage or a bank failure, a revelation appeared. It sounds cynical. To many, it is. But Brodie backed it up with a level of footnotes that forced the Church to eventually open its own archives to counter her.
What No Man Knows My History Actually Changed
Before Brodie, biographies of Joseph Smith were basically divided into two camps: hagiography or hate. You either thought he was a literal mouthpiece for God or a total conman. There was no middle ground. Brodie tried to find a third path, looking at Smith as a frontier intellectual, a product of the "Burned-over District" of New York where every other person was starting a new religion.
She focused heavily on his environment. She looked at the folk magic of the 1820s—the peep stones, the treasure digging, the folk traditions that permeated the Northeast. This wasn't common knowledge in the 1940s. Most members of the Church had never heard that Joseph used the same stones to find buried gold as he did to translate the Book of Mormon. Brodie dragged that into the light.
The impact was immediate. She was excommunicated for "apostasy" shortly after the book's publication. The Church’s response was swift, but they couldn't put the genie back in the bottle. Scholars like Marvin Hill and later Richard Bushman had to step up to provide more nuanced, faith-friendly academic responses. Without No Man Knows My History, we probably wouldn't have Rough Stone Rolling, the other heavyweight biography of Smith. Brodie forced the conversation to get serious.
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The Problem With the "Fraud" Narrative
You have to be careful with Brodie. While her research was groundbreaking, she had a habit of playing amateur psychiatrist. She’d get inside Joseph’s head and tell you exactly what he was feeling during a specific vision. You can't really do that as a historian. How do you know if a man felt "guilt" or "exultation" in 1834? You don't.
Critics, including some very smart secular historians, have pointed out that Brodie sometimes ignored evidence that didn't fit her "evolutionary" theory of Smith’s development. She wanted him to be a conscious deceiver who eventually started believing his own lies. It’s a compelling narrative arc. It makes for a great book. But is it the absolute truth?
Even the legendary historian Jan Shipps, who isn't LDS, noted that Brodie’s work is brilliant but fundamentally flawed because it views everything through the lens of 20th-century secularism. It doesn't leave room for the possibility that Smith genuinely believed what he was saying, even if the "facts" on the ground looked messy.
Why It Stays on the Bestseller List
Go to any bookstore in Salt Lake City or look at the history charts on Amazon. It’s still there. Why? Because it’s a page-turner. Brodie could write circles around most modern academics. She captures the mud, the blood, and the frantic energy of the early American frontier.
She describes the Kirtland Safety Society bank collapse with the tension of a heist movie. She chronicles the secret introductions of polygamy in Nauvoo with a sense of impending doom. You feel the heat of the mobs. You feel the charisma of the man who could lead thousands of people across a continent.
The Controversy Over DNA and Sources
Back in the 40s, Brodie made some bold claims about Joseph Smith’s children—specifically those born to his plural wives. For decades, this was a massive point of contention. Brodie listed several children as likely offspring of Smith. Fast forward to the 21st century, and DNA testing has actually debunked several of those specific claims.
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It turns out, in those specific cases, Brodie was wrong.
Does that invalidate the whole book? No. But it shows the limitations of her "detective" style of history. She was working with fragments, rumors, and 100-year-old affidavits. Sometimes she guessed, and sometimes those guesses didn't hold up to modern science. Yet, her core thesis—that Joseph Smith was a man of his time who fundamentally reshaped the American religious landscape through his own creative power—remains the central challenge for any biographer.
Navigating the Legacy
If you're going to dive into No Man Knows My History, you need a roadmap. You can't just take it as gospel (ironically).
First, read it for the narrative. It’s a masterpiece of 20th-century biography. But keep a copy of the Joseph Smith Papers or Bushman's work nearby. The contrast between how Brodie interprets a document and how a modern historian interprets it is where the real learning happens.
Second, pay attention to the footnotes. Brodie was a pioneer in using the newspaper records of the time. She looked at what the neighbors were saying in Palmyra and Manchester. These "affidavits" are controversial because many were collected by people who hated Smith, but Brodie argued they contained kernels of truth that the official history suppressed.
Basically, the book serves as a mirror. What you see in it often depends on what you bring to it. If you're looking for a reason to leave the faith, Brodie provides a library of ammunition. If you're looking to understand the complexities of American history, she provides a window into a world that was chaotic, mystical, and deeply strange.
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Moving Forward with the Text
To get the most out of this landmark work without getting lost in the polemics, follow these steps:
Check the sources. When Brodie makes a particularly shocking claim about Smith’s motives, look at the footnote. See if she’s quoting a primary source (like a journal) or if she’s interpreting a third-party account written decades later.
Contrast with modern scholarship. The LDS Church has since published the Gospel Topics Essays, which actually acknowledge many of the things Brodie was once attacked for, such as the use of a seer stone in a hat. Reading Brodie alongside these official essays provides a fascinating look at how "heresy" sometimes becomes accepted history.
Look at the literary structure. Notice how Brodie builds tension. She wasn't just writing history; she was writing a tragedy. Understanding the "tragedy" framework helps you see where she might be stretching the facts to fit the "fall of a hero" narrative.
The reality is that Joseph Smith remains one of the most polarizing figures in American history. No Man Knows My History didn't solve the mystery of who he was, but it made it impossible to ignore the questions. It’s a book that demands an opinion. Whether you find it brilliant or biased, it changed the way we talk about religion in the United States forever.