Debby Applegate
American historian and biographer / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Debby Applegate?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Debby Applegate is an American historian and biographer. She is the author of Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age and The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Debby Applegate | |
---|---|
Born | (1968-02-01) February 1, 1968 (age 56) Eugene, Oregon, U.S. |
Occupation | Historian |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Amherst College (BA) Yale University (PhD) |
Genre | Biography |
Notable works | The Most Famous Man in America (2006) |
Spouse | Bruce Tulgan |
Born in Eugene, Oregon, Applegate attended Amherst College as an undergraduate, where she began a two-decade fascination with famous alumnus Henry Ward Beecher, a 19th-century abolitionist minister who was later the subject of a widely publicized sex scandal. She made Beecher the subject of her dissertation in American Studies at Yale, where she received a Ph.D. After several more years of research, Applegate published The Most Famous Man in America, which was praised by critics and awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Her second book, Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age, an account of the life and times of the notorious Manhattan brothel-keeper Polly Adler, was published in November 2021 after thirteen years of extensive research.