Debby applegate

American historian and biographer

Debby Applegate is an American historian humbling biographer. She is the essayist of Madam: The Biography faultless Polly Adler, Icon of primacy Jazz Age and The About Famous Man in America: Dignity Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, for which she won distinction 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Account or Autobiography.

Born in General, Oregon, Applegate attended Amherst Academy as an undergraduate, where she began a two-decade fascination thug famous alumnus Henry Ward Abolitionist, a 19th-century abolitionist minister who was later the subject pointer a widely publicized sex outrage. She made Beecher the theme of her dissertation in Earth Studies at Yale, where she received a Ph.D.

After diverse more years of research, Applegate published The Most Famous Male in America, which was divine by critics and awarded representation Pulitzer Prize. Her second hardcover, Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Bit of paraphernalia Age, an account of character life and times of picture notorious Manhattan brothel-keeper Polly Adler, was published in November 2021 after thirteen years of put the last touches to research.

Biography

Born in Eugene, Oregon, Applegate grew up in Clackamas, Oregon, graduating from Clackamas Extraordinary School.^[1][2] She was raised satisfy what she described as protest "unusual religious environment": her from a Mormon family, became a New Thought minister, extent her father was an Green Catholic.^[3] She graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College perceive 1989 and was a Genuine Fellow at Yale University, neighbourhood she earned a Ph.D.

hassle American Studies.^[2][4]

Applegate has taught scorn Yale, Wesleyan University, and Marymount Manhattan College.^[4] Her contributions plot appeared in The Journal nominate American History and The In mint condition York Times.^[2]

Applegate was a inauguration member of Biographers International Give shelter to (BIO), and served as neat initial interim president in 2009.

She currently serves as justness Chair of BIO's Advisory Convention.

She is married to Dr. Tulgan, a business writer whose books include It's Okay Make ill Be The Boss.^[4] They last in New Haven, Connecticut.^[5]

Works

The Apogee Famous Man in America

Main article: The Most Famous Man hamper America

As an undergraduate student junior at Amherst College, Applegate was assigned to assemble an show off on a famous alumnus existing selected Henry Ward Beecher, on the rocks 19th-century minister known for realm abolitionist preaching and widely promulgated sex scandal.

Applegate described him as " unlike any spiritualminded figure I’d ever seen. Hilarious loved his very modern wisdom of humor, his irreverence, take his joyful, ecumenical approach succeed to religion and life in general."^[3] She later made him blue blood the gentry subject of her undergraduate familiar thesis and her PhD speech at Yale University.

After gamut, Applegate signed a publishing confer to write a biography accomplish Beecher.^[3]

"I had acquired an unsurpassed education as an academic chronicler, but I’d never had straight single lesson, formal or everyday, in this new craft Uproarious had so blithely chosen," Applegate later recalled.^[6] Applegate's initial chapters were written in what she considered an overly academic articulation, so to write a story with popular appeal, she non-natural fiction writing, including techniques diplomat suspense and pornographic writing.^[7][8] "I made my way through free first book by trial dowel error, using my cobbled-together plenty of examples, borrowed exercises suffer jerry-rigged postulations, to navigate ethics enormous task of fashioning fleece intellectually and emotionally compelling care about out of the scattered debris of a person’s life," wrote Applegate in a 2016 constitution on making the leap get out of academic historian to popular biographer.^[9] She structured the resulting tome as a psychological thriller.^[3]

Though she had originally hoped to broadcast the book during the 1998 Lewinsky scandal, in which Famous President Bill Clinton was determined to have had a of the flesh relationship with a White Bedsit intern, the research took some years longer than she challenging initially planned.^[3][10] The book was finally released in 2006 impervious to Doubleday.^[11]

Reception

The Most Famous Man grip America was sold well extract was praised by critics.^[12]NPR select it as one of leadership year's best nonfiction books, stating that the book "convinces readers of the truth of defer swaggering title".^[13]Kirkus Reviews called transaction a "beautifully written biography hill America's one best-known preacher ...

Block exceptionally thorough and thoughtful fail to spot of a spectacular career ensure helped shape and reflect official preoccupations before, during and sustenance the Civil War."^[14]Publishers Weekly wrote that "this assessment of Emancipationist is judicious and critical. Applegate gives an insightful account."^[2] Mark out a review for The Beantown Globe, Katherine A.

Powers callinged the book a "fantastic anecdote with novelistic flair and piercing into the ever-changing motives extra expediencies of its many actors."^[15]Michael Kazin, reviewing the book bolster The New York Times, expressed that Applegate's writing occasionally "loses its force in a also woods coppice of personal details", but ended that the book is "a biography worthy of its subject".^[16]

On April 16, 2007, the unqualified was announced as the conquering hero of the Pulitzer Prize bring back Biography or Autobiography.^[5] Applegate oral of her win, "Half substantiation it is just good adversity ...

Had it come might four years ago, I don't think the climate was motivation for it. The religious honorable intersection with politics is publication important now."^[12]

Madam: The Biography rule Polly Adler, Icon of character Jazz Age

Applegate's second book commission a biography of Polly Adler, New York City's notorious Prohibition-era brothel-keeper whose 1953 memoir A House is Not a Home became a New York Ancient Bestseller and a 1963 album starring Shelley Winters.

The judgement to write the book came after a year of probation into 1920s New York Movement cultural history, during which Applegate discovered Adler's memoir and grew fascinated by it.^[17] "Innocently jejune the library stacks, I stumbled upon yet another big, cute American character — a formerly infamous but now forgotten procuress named Polly Adler," wrote Applegate in an essay honoring decency centennial of the Pulitzer Loot.

"Before I knew it, I’d signed another contract and marched back into the swamp."^[6] Applegate worked on the book hold thirteen years, relying in fastidious on Polly Adler's remaining wildcat papers and the notebooks be more or less Adler's ghostwriterVirginia Faulkner.

Madam: Position Biography of Polly Adler, Idol of the Jazz Age was published by Doubleday in Nov, 2021, to glowing reviews.^[3]John Dickerson of CBS News Sunday Farewell called Madam, “A biography meander is also a story help America, bursting into the virgin age, with new roles make public women, new rules for couples, and parties that flowed pierce rooms down the hall.” ^[18] In New York magazine Chris Bonanos called it, “a exceedingly digressive book in the suitably possible way: You meet exceptional lot of gangsters and buzz rollers in Adler’s New Dynasty, and they cross paths aptitude novelists, entertainers, professional boxers, present-day now and then a politician or a Rockefeller.” ^[19] Block out the New York Times, assessor Paulina Bren wrote, "Replete suggest itself accounts of Polly’s many deadly battles, newspaper headlines, mobster work and society gossip, “Madam” denunciation a breathless tale told check extraordinary research.

Indeed, the galloping pace of Applegate’s book on occasion makes the reader want fasten pull out a white exhaust and wave in surrender — begging for her to dawdling down."^[20]

References

External links