In a lively and clear narrative, Todd keeps the lives, loves, and projects of moral improvement undertaken by the eleven children of Lyman Beecher interwoven in a chronological history of the Beecher family. A more rounded and intimate picture of Lyman Beecher than we have had, and a great window into the social and religious ferment of the nineteenth century."" - Joan D. Hedrick, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of <i>Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life</i> <br /><br />""The Beecher family had it all, and it's all in Obbie Tyler Todd's wide-ranging book. Piety. Erudition. Eloquence. Activism. Scandal. <i>The Beechers</i> is a thoughtful and entertaining history. Highly recommended."" - John G. Turner, author of <i>They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty</i> <br /><br />""The Beecher family was amazing. Their story offers a window through which to view some of the most influential and often contested outlooks in the era spanning the American Civil War."" - George M. Marsden, author of <i>Jonathan Edwards: A Life</i><br /><br />""This is the best book on Lyman Beecher's legacies, the nineteenth-century Beecher family, and 'Beecherism' on offer."" - Douglas A. Sweeney, author of <i>Edwards the Exegete: Biblical Interpretation and Anglo-Protestant Culture on the Edge of the Enlightenment</i>
Obbie Tyler Todd's masterful work is the first biography of the Beechers in more than forty years and the first chronological portrait of one of the most influential families in nineteenth-century America.