As an undergraduate student worker at Amherst College, Applegate was assigned to assemble an exhibit on a famous alumnus and selected Henry Ward Beecher, a 19th-century minister known for his abolitionist preaching and widely publicized sex scandal. Applegate described him as " unlike any religious figure I’d ever seen. I loved his very modern sense of humor, his irreverence, and his joyful, ecumenical approach to religion and life in general."[3] She later made him the subject of her undergraduate senior thesis and her PhD dissertation at Yale University. After graduation, Applegate signed a publishing contract to write a biography of Beecher.[3]
"I had acquired an excellent education as an academic historian, but I’d never had a single lesson, formal or informal, in this new craft I had so blithely chosen," Applegate later recalled.[6] Applegate's initial chapters were written in what she considered an overly academic voice, so to write a biography with popular appeal, she studied fiction writing, including techniques for suspense and pornographic writing.[7][8] "I made my way through my first book by trial and error, using my cobbled-together collection of examples, borrowed exercises and jerry-rigged postulations, to navigate the enormous task of fashioning an intellectually and emotionally compelling account out of the scattered detritus of a person’s life," wrote Applegate in a 2016 essay on making the leap from academic historian to popular biographer.[9] She structured the resulting book as a psychological thriller.[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.[3][10] The book was finally released in 2006 by Doubleday.[11]
The Most Famous Man in America sold well and was praised by critics.[12] NPR selected it as one of the year's best nonfiction books, stating that the book "convinces readers of the truth of that swaggering title".[13] 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."[14] Publishers Weekly wrote that "this assessment of Beecher is judicious and critical. Applegate gives an insightful account."[2] In a review for The Boston Globe, Katherine A. Powers called the book a "fantastic story with novelistic flair and penetration into the ever-changing motives and expediencies of its many actors."[15] Michael Kazin, reviewing the book for The New York Times, stated that Applegate's writing occasionally "loses its force in a thicket of personal details", but concluded that the book is "a biography worthy of its subject".[16]
On April 16, 2007, the book was announced as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.[5] Applegate said of her win, "Half of it is just good luck ... Had it come out four years ago, I don't think the climate was ready for it. The religious right intersection with politics is very important now."[12]
Applegate's second book is a biography of Polly Adler, New York City's notorious Prohibition-era brothel-keeper whose 1953 memoir A House is Not a Home became a New York Times Bestseller and a 1963 film starring Shelley Winters. The decision to write the book came after a year of research into 1920s New York City cultural history, during which Applegate discovered Adler's memoir and grew fascinated by it.[17] "Innocently strolling the library stacks, I stumbled upon yet another big, bewitching American character — a once infamous but now forgotten madam named Polly Adler," wrote Applegate in an essay honoring the centennial of the Pulitzer Prizes. "Before I knew it, I’d signed another contract and marched back into the swamp."[6] Applegate worked on the book for thirteen years, relying in particular on Polly Adler's remaining personal papers and the notebooks of Adler's ghostwriter Virginia Faulkner.
Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age was published by Doubleday in November, 2021, to glowing reviews.[3] John Dickerson of CBS News Sunday Morning called Madam, “A biography that is also a story of America, bursting into the modern age, with new roles for women, new rules for couples, and parties that flowed into rooms down the hall.” [18] In New York magazine Chris Bonanos called it, “a hugely digressive book in the best possible way: You meet a lot of gangsters and high rollers in Adler’s New York, and they cross paths with novelists, entertainers, professional boxers, and now and then a mayor or a Rockefeller.” [19] In the New York Times, reviewer Paulina Bren wrote, "Replete with accounts of Polly’s many court battles, newspaper headlines, mobster dealings and society gossip, “Madam” is a breathless tale told through extraordinary research. Indeed, the galloping pace of Applegate’s book sometimes makes the reader want to pull out a white flag and wave in surrender — begging for her to slow down."[20]
