American Freethinker

"Despite being one of the most conspicuous and infamous freethinkers in the United States at the start of the nineteenth century, Elihu Palmer has proven an elusive historical figure since his death in 1806...Fischer’s beautifully written biography, American Freethinker, draws a more complete picture of Palmer than any other scholar has thus far managed. It pulls information from scattered and varied primary source material—including gravestones, church records, and newspaper advertisements—in an effort to recover the full scope of Palmer’s complicated and often tragic life, as well as to trace the evolution of his religious thought...American Freethinker successfully re-creates the contentious intellectual environments of various locales within the United States around the turn of the nineteenth century. Fischer’s crisp exposition of philosophical and religious ideas, cast of colorful characters, and tales of fierce public disagreements, personal traumas, and dramatic turning points will appeal to a broad audience."—William and Mary Quarterly

"Despite Palmer's relative obscurity, this book makes an incontrovertible case that he is worthy of a biography, and the narrative that Fischer has woven here is a delightful and thought-provoking read...As you make your way through Fischer's sympathetic but not overly credulous account, you get to try on a whole series of ideas, some appealing, some disquieting, some convincing, some preposterous. You get to live in someone else's mind for a while. What better reason is there to read a biography?"—Journal of the Early Republic

"[E]xciting...absorbing [and] crisply written...Elihu Palmer (1764–1806), when remembered at all, is often sidelined as a firebrand or crank. This book reintroduces him as a charismatic, resilient go-getter whose vitalist cosmology reveals the unexpected philosophical variety within early American nonreligion...American Freethinker energizes the study of early American nonreligion by detailing the life and views of a significant Deist who, properly understood, upends the common misconception that Deists uniformly believed in a watchmaker God."—Early American Literature

"Using the life of Elihu Palmer as its entrée, Kirsten Fischer’s American Freethinker serves as an admirable introduction to the history of Enlightenment-inspired radical religion in the United States"—Nova Religio

"American Freethinker is the first full-length study of Palmer—a long overdue treatment of this intriguing figure."—Church History

"American Freethinker is a masterful account of a fascinating but understudied figure. Kirsten Fischer has uncovered a trove of new information about Elihu Palmer and has written a definitive biography that will be of interest to specialists, students, and general readers interested in the religious, cultural, or political history of the early republic."—Seth Cotlar, author of Tom Paine's America: The Rise and Fall of Trans-Atlantic Radicalism in the Early Republic

"With crystalline prose, Kirsten Fischer rescues Elihu Palmer from obscurity and, more importantly, sets his ideas against the broad religious and intellectual contexts of the early United States. Her investigation extends beyond one iconoclastic freethinker to show the vibrancy of the period's intellectual climate and the dynamism of freethought. This is a book of enduring significance."—Erik R. Seeman, author of Speaking with the Dead in Early America