The book describes Beecher's childhood, ministry, support for the abolition of slavery and other social causes, and widely publicized 1875 trial for adultery.

[2] As an undergraduate student worker at Amherst College, Applegate was assigned to assemble an exhibit on a famous alumnus and selected Beecher.

[3] Though she had originally hoped to publish the book during the 1998 Lewinsky scandal, in which US President Bill Clinton was discovered to have had a sexual relationship with a White House intern, the research took several years longer than she had initially planned.

Henry was initially overshadowed by his accomplished siblings, who included Harriet Beecher Stowe, later the author of the antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

In the years leading up to the Civil War, he raised money to purchase slaves from captivity and to send rifles—nicknamed "Beecher's Bibles"—to abolitionists fighting in Kansas and Nebraska.

Mainstream Christianity is so deeply infused with the rhetoric of Christ's love that most Americans can imagine nothing else, and have no appreciation or memory of the revolution wrought by Beecher and his peers.

[9]Applegate adds that it is hard not to consider Beecher's various affairs or near-affairs hypocritical, but compares him to other great leaders whose need for love and approval led them into sex scandals.

Ultimately, Applegate concludes, Beecher was able "to transform his flaws into a powerful force of empathy and ambition" that "brought a new emotional candor to public life".

[11] Kirkus Reviews called it a "beautifully written biography of America's one best-known preacher ... An exceptionally thorough and thoughtful account of a spectacular career that helped shape and reflect national preoccupations before, during and after the Civil War.