Mormon History

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 in the so-called "burned-over district" of upstate New York, which was producing seers and prophets daily. Most of the new creeds flamed out; Smith's would endure, becoming the most significant homegrown religion in American history. In American Zion Benjamin E. Park presents a fresh, sweeping account of the Latter-day Saints.

Brigham Young was a rough-hewn craftsman from New York whose impoverished and obscure life was electrified by the Mormon faith. He trudged around the United States and England to gain converts for Mormonism, spoke in spiritual tongues, married more than 50 women, and eventually transformed a barren desert into his vision of the Kingdom of God. While previous accounts of his life have been distorted by hagiography or polemical exposé, John Turner provides a fully realized portrait of a colossal figure in American religion, politics, and westward expansion.

Here is an audio edition of the sacred text of the Latter-Day Saint movement that followers believe contains the writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from approximately 2200 B.C. to A.D. 421. A fascinating listen for religious scholars and denominational adherents alike.

A stunning and sure to be controversial book that pieces together, through more than two dozen 19th-century diaries, letters, albums, minute books, and quilts left by first-generation Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, the never before told story of the earliest days of the women of Mormon "plural marriage", whose right to vote in the state of Utah was given to them by a Mormon-dominated legislature as an outgrowth of polygamy in 1870, 50 years ahead of the vote nationally ratified by Congress.

In 1851, Olive Oatman was a 13-year-old pioneer traveling west toward Zion, with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own.

Straight off the slopes and into the spotlight, Heather Gay is famous for speaking the gospel truth. Whether as a businesswoman, mother, or television personality, she is unafraid to blaze a new trail, even if it means losing family, friends, and her community.

In the single month of September 1993, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints excommunicated or disciplined six of its members. These six individuals–some of them intellectuals, some activists, and some both–were soon dubbed the “September Six.” In The September Six and the Struggle for the Soul of Mormonism, Sara M. Patterson challenges listeners to think more deeply about the events of that month and the era in which they unfolded.

Mormon Doctrine in the Apocrypha: a Concordance of Teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Extracanonical Writings is an alphabetical listing of 179 teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that occur in 66 ancient sacred texts that are not a part of the biblical canon, along with the corresponding teachings from those ancient texts.At the end of the volume is the section entitled “The Extracanonical Sources” wherein bibliographies and brief descriptions of each cited extracanonical work are listed alphabetically, followed by an index of the ...

The massacre at Mountain Meadows on September 11, 1857, was the single most violent attack on a wagon train in the 30-year history of the Oregon and California trails. Yet it has been all but forgotten. Will Bagley's Blood of the Prophets is an award-winning, riveting account of the attack on the Baker-Fancher wagon train by Mormons in the local militia and a few Paiute Indians.

On the morning of November 4, 2019, a caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a desolate stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Firing semi-automatic weapons, the attackers killed nine people and gravely injured five more. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities-fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the LDS Church and settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late nineteenth century.

Though Joseph Smith's run for president is now best remembered for its gruesome end, the renegade campaign was revolutionary. Smith called for the total abolition of slavery, the closure of the country's penitentiaries, and the reestablishment of a national bank to stabilize the economy. But Smith's most important proposal was for an expansion of protections for religious minorities. At a time when the Bill of Rights did not apply to individual states, Smith sought to empower the federal government to protect minorities when states failed to do so.

Her family was slaughtered. Her heart demands justice. But God asks her to forgive the man who killed them. Jael is a skilled midwife—but inside, she’s barely breathing. After Lamanite forces murder her family, she buries her grief behind a wall of duty. Then the unthinkable happens: Xaman, the commander who gave the order to kill her family, walks into her city claiming he’s changed. A convert. A man of peace. A believer. As Jael watches his transformation unfold, she faces the unrelenting whisper of God’s call to forgive. But forgiveness isn’t easy—and grace always costs ...

In 1820, a young farm boy in search of truth has a vision of God the Father and Jesus Christ. Three years later, an angel guides him to an ancient record buried in a hill near his home. With God’s help, he translates the record and organizes the Savior’s church in the latter days. Soon others join him, accepting the invitation to become Saints through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. But opposition and violence follow those who defy old traditions to embrace restored truths.

An Epic Tale of Adventure and Courage, of white water rapids, hostile Indians, freezing snows, lack of food and water, moving 500-pound wagons over the Rocky Mountains... In 1856, a dream of a new life in the Salt Lake Valley propels 500 English converts into an extraordinary adventure. Lacking funds for a traditional journey, they devise a daring plan: sail to Boston, take a train to Iowa City, and then, with hand-built carts, embark on a grueling 1,300-mile trek to their promised land. Leading this audacious expedition is Edmund Lovell Ellsworth, chosen by the church’s president for his...

Mormonism Unvailed, authored by Eber D. Howe and published in 1834, presents one of the first published critiques and investigations into the origins and credibility of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS Church or Mormon Church) and its founder, Joseph Smith. The book elucidates the skepticism and criticism of early Mormonism, disputing its authenticity and alleging fraudulent and deceptive practices within its early formation.

In 1830, a young seer and sometime treasure hunter named Joseph Smith began organizing adherents into a new religious community that would come to be called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (and known informally as the Mormons). One of the nascent faith’s early initiates was a twenty-three-year-old Ohio farmer named Parley Pratt, the distant grandfather of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In The Mormon People, religious historian Matthew Bowman peels back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine.

This three-and-a-half-hour audiobook offers a faithful retelling of the Hofmann forgeries, and their impact on the progressive rewriting of Latter-Day Saint history. Why did new Mormon historians insist Hofmann’s forgeries were legitimate, even when investigators provided convincing evidence to them of the hoax? How did Bruce R. McConkie know Hofmann’s Joseph Smith III Blessing was a fake, despite authentication by document experts and pressure by historians calling him “incompetent” for questioning?

Polygamous wives were participants in a controversial and very public religious practice that violated most 19th-century social and religious rules of a monogamous America. Harline considers the questions: Were these women content with their sacrifice? Did the benefits of polygamous marriage for the Mormons outweigh the human toll it required and the embarrassment it continues to bring?

Three Nephites. One star. A divine quest that will shake empires—and eternity. When an angel descends with a heavenly summons, three chosen men leave behind everything—family, homeland, safety—to follow a star blazing across the sky. Their destination: the birth of the Son of God. Their path: perilous, holy, and utterly unknown. Jared, a master of the stars, can chart the heavens—but not the unraveling of his own fate. Totec, a warrior prince, must conquer the pride that threatens to destroy their mission from within. Nephi, prophet and leader, bears the sacred call of God—and a ...

This book is a fascinating new approach to the Book of Mormon that offers new insights into how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. Readers have always known the book contains language from the King James Bible, but what about all the non-biblical language? Where did Joseph Smith acquire his lexicon? In his earliest known personal history (1832), Joseph Smith, Jr., said he had an "intimate acquaintance with those of different denominations." Later, when asked about the establishment of the Church, Joseph began with his "experience while in my juvenile years, say from 6 years old up ...