Richard Bushman and No Man Knows My History

John Dehlin and his collaborators continue to misinform viewers and readers about the relationship between Richard Bushman's book Rough Stone Rolling (RSR) and Fawn Brodie's book No Man Knows My History (NMK).

   

For example, in an October 21, 2022, YouTube video, he said this during his interview of a "Questioning Mormon."

47:06

"Questioning Mormon":  Is No Man Knows My History a book about, is it an autobiography--

John Dehlin:  It's the best biography, it's not an autobiography, it's the best biography ever written about Joseph Smith

"Questioning Mormon":  by the woman who was excommunicated--

John Dehlin:  By David O McKay's niece. So David O. McKay was prophet his niece uh wrote this biography and it's the best. Richard Bushman of Rough Stone Rolling quotes this book more than any other book he quotes

https://youtu.be/gl50qEdRABQ?t=2832

Notice how he misleads his audience into thinking that NMK must be authoritative and reliable because Richard Bushman quoted and cited it so frequently.

_____

Richard didn't cite NMK because he considered it reliable and authoritative; he cited it because it was not reliable and authoritative.

Richard long recognized the problems with NMK, which employed a genre of psychoanalysis popular in the era during which it was written. For that reason, he very consciously intended RSR to replace and supersede NMK as the definitive JS bio in the non-LDS world.  

He even deliberately used the same publisher (Alfred Knopf).  Therefore, he needed to address NMK frequently so that no one could say NMK covered things that RSR did not. Otherwise, readers might think they had to go to NMK for the full picture.

This isn't to say that RSR is perfect. In some places, the book states theory and interpretation as fact, as I've noted here:

https://www.mobom.org/rsr-review

However, RSR is still more reliable than NMK.