The first major history of Mormonism in a decade, drawing on newly available sources to reveal a profoundly divided faith that has nevertheless shaped the nation. 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. How Mormonism succeeded is the story told by historian Benjamin E. Park in American Zion. Drawing on sources that have become available only in the last two decades, Park presents a fresh, sweeping account of the Latter-day Saints: from the flight to Utah Territory in 1847 to the public renunciation of polygamy in 1890; from the Mormon leadership’s forging of an alliance with the Republican Party in the wake of the New Deal to the “Mormon moment” of 2012, which saw the premiere of The Book of Mormon musical and the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney; and beyond. In the twentieth century, Park shows, Mormons began to move ever closer to the center of American life, shaping culture, politics, and law along the way. But Park’s epic isn’t rooted in triumphalism. It turns out that the image of complete obedience to a single, earthly prophet—an image spread by Mormons and non-Mormons alike—is misleading. In fact, Mormonism has always been defined by internal conflict. Joseph Smith’s wife, Emma, inaugurated a legacy of feminist agitation over gender roles. Black believers petitioned for belonging even after a racial policy was instituted in the 1850s that barred them from priesthood ordination and temple ordinances (a restriction that remained in place until 1978). Indigenous and Hispanic saints—the latter represent a large portion of new converts today—have likewise labored to exist within a community that long called them “Lamanites,” a term that reflected White-centered theologies. Today, battles over sexuality and gender have riven the Church anew, as gay and trans saints have launched their own fight for acceptance. A definitive, character-driven work of history, American Zion is essential to any understanding of the Mormon past, present, and future. But its lessons extend beyond the faith: as Park puts it, the Mormon story is the American story.

Best Book Award • Mormon History Association A brilliant young historian excavates the brief life of a lost Mormon city, uncovering a “grand, underappreciated saga in American history” (Wall Street Journal). In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park draws on newly available sources to re-create the founding and destruction of the Mormon city of Nauvoo. On the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois, the early Mormons built a religious utopia, establishing their own army and writing their own constitution. For those offenses and others—including the introduction of polygamy, which was bitterly opposed by Emma Smith, the iron-willed first wife of Joseph Smith—the surrounding population violently ejected the Mormons, sending them on their flight to Utah. Throughout his absorbing chronicle, Park shows how the Mormons of Nauvoo were representative of their era, and in doing so elevates Mormon history into the American mainstream.

"A deep, fascinating dive into a uniquely American brand of religious zealotry that poses a grave threat to our national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife sanctuaries, and other public lands. It also happens to be a delight to read." —JON KRAKAUER American Zion is the story of the Bundy family, famous for their armed conflicts in the West. With an antagonism that goes back to the very first Mormons who fled the Midwest for the Great Basin, they hold a sense of entitlement that confronts both law and democracy. Today their cowboy confrontations threaten public lands, wild species, and American heritage. BETSY GAINES QUAMMEN is a historian and conservationist. She received a doctorate in Environmental History from Montana State University in 2017, her dissertation focusing on Mormon settlement and public land conflicts. After college in Colorado, caretaking for a bed and breakfast in Mosier, Oregon, and serving breakfasts at a cafe in Kanab, Utah, Betsy has settled in Bozeman, Montana, where she now lives with her husband, writer David Quammen, three huge dogs, an overweight cat, and a pretty big python named Boots.

A Book of Mormons not only provides a fascinating glimpse into a religion that has taken center stage in the last presidential election, but will prompt insights into what living an encompassing religion means both individually and for the community trying to understand exactly "What does it mean to be a Mormon today?" Mormonism is at a crossroads, having been under the microscopic lens of the media for the past five years, even as Mormons young and old grapple with the openness and accessibility of The Information Age. Both the institutional church and its lay members are working to better define the faith for outsiders as well as within. This collection of essays from a broad swath of Mormons -- some who live their faith quietly, others who wrestle with how it colors their professional endeavors -- is an attempt to broaden perspectives about Mormons and demystifying stereotypes.

The authors introduce the faith's charismatic early leaders, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, delve deeply into Mormon rites and traditions, follow the adventurous trail of Mormon pioneers into the West, evoke the momentous rise of Salt Lake City, and describe the numerous skirmishes and court battles between the Mormons and their neighbors, other religions, and the American government. They describe the church's formidable institutional apparatus, the unique role of women in Mormon affairs, both before and after the Mormons' practice of polygamy, and how the church has addressed the challenges of modernity. Throughout, the Bushmans demonstrate how the rise of a small and persecuted movement intersected and even transformed the history of the American nation.

“From one of the brightest of the new generation of Mormon-studies scholars comes a crisp, engaging account of the religion’s history.”—The Wall Street Journal With Mormonism on the nation’s radar as never before, religious historian Matthew Bowman has written an essential book that pulls back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine. He recounts the church’s origins and explains how the Mormon vision has evolved—and with it the esteem in which Mormons have been held in the eyes of their countrymen. Admired on the one hand as hardworking paragons of family values, Mormons have also been derided as oddballs and persecuted as polygamists, heretics, and zealots. The place of Mormonism in public life continues to generate heated debate, yet the faith has never been more popular. One of the fastest-growing religions in the world, it retains an uneasy sense of its relationship with the main line of American culture. Mormons will surely play an even greater role in American civic life in the years ahead. The Mormon People comes as a vital addition to the corpus of American religious history—a frank and balanced demystification of a faith that remains a mystery for many. With a new afterword by the author. “Fascinating and fair-minded . . . a sweeping soup-to-nuts primer on Mormonism.”—The Boston Globe “A cogent, judicious, and important account of a faith that has been an important element in American history but remained surprisingly misunderstood.”—Michael Beschloss “A thorough, stimulating rendering of the Mormon past and present.”—Kirkus Reviews “[A] smart, lucid history.”—Tom Brokaw

In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, college-age Latter-day Saints began undertaking a remarkable intellectual pilgrimage to the nation's elite universities, including Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, Chicago, and Stanford. Thomas W. Simpson chronicles the academic migration of hundreds of LDS students from the 1860s through the late 1930s, when church authority J. Reuben Clark Jr., himself a product of the Columbia University Law School, gave a reactionary speech about young Mormons' search for intellectual cultivation. Clark's leadership helped to set conservative parameters that in large part came to characterize Mormon intellectual life. At the outset, Mormon women and men were purposefully dispatched to such universities to "gather the world's knowledge to Zion." Simpson, drawing on unpublished diaries, among other materials, shows how LDS students commonly described American universities as egalitarian spaces that fostered a personally transformative sense of freedom to explore provisional reconciliations of Mormon and American identities and religious and scientific perspectives. On campus, Simpson argues, Mormon separatism died and a new, modern Mormonism was born: a Mormonism at home in the United States but at odds with itself. Fierce battles among Mormon scholars and church leaders ensued over scientific thought, progressivism, and the historicity of Mormonism's sacred past. The scars and controversy, Simpson concludes, linger.