Portal:Utah/Selected biography/7

Fawn M. Brodie (September 15, 1915–January 10, 1981) was a biographer and professor of history at UCLA, best known for Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, a work of psychobiography, and No Man Knows My History, the first important non-hagiographic biography of Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism. She also wrote biographies of Thaddeus Stevens, Sir Richard Burton and Richard Nixon.

Brodie was the second of five children of Thomas E. and Fawn Brimhall McKay. Born in Ogden, Utah, she grew up in Huntsville, about ten miles east. Both her parents descended from families influential in early Mormonism. Her maternal grandfather, George H. Brimhall, was president of Brigham Young University. Her father, Thomas Evans McKay, was a bishop, president of the LDS Swiss-Austrian mission, and an assistant to the Council of the Twelve. Brodie's paternal uncle was David O. McKay. An Apostle in the LDS church when Brodie was born, he later became the ninth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.