This book pays tribute to Joseph and Hyrum's shared leadership-and challenges us to carry on their legacy. The stories and examples of shared leadership illustrate how they honored agency and exerted righteous influence, grew through adversity, forged bonds of obligation and love, governed conflict, and organized through councils.

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. The women and men who join the church must choose whether or not they will stay true to their covenants, establish Zion, and proclaim the gospel to a troubled world. The Standard of Truth is the first book in Saints, a new, four-volume narrative history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Fast-paced, meticulously researched, Saints recounts true stories of Latter-day Saints across the globe and answers the Lord’s call to write history “for the good of the church, and for the rising generations” (Doctrine and Covenants 69:8).

Carthage Conspiracy deals with the general problem of Mormon/non-Mormon conflict, as well as with the dramatic story of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, his brother Hyrum, and their alleged assassins. It places the infamous event at the Carthage jail (1846) and the subsequent murder-conspiracy trial in the context of Mormon and American legal history, and deals with the question of achieving justice when crimes are politically motivated and popularly supported.

Winner of the Evans Biography Award, the Mormon History Association Best Book Award, and the John Whitmer Association (RLDS) Best Book Award. A preface to this first paperback edition of the biography of Emma Hale Smith, Joseph Smith's wife, reviews the history of the book and its reception. Various editorial changes effected in this edition are also discussed."--back cover.

It is 1822 in Upstate, New York where Mason Chase hires a crew of local farm hands to dig a well on his property. At the bottom of the well a stone is found and we quickly find young Joseph Smith using this stone to find treasures said to be hidden below the earth. His new found fame as a necromancer leads to a legal trial where he is charged with deceiving people through the use of the stone. As maturity sets in, visions of treasure are set aside for visions of heavenly messengers, and a new religion is born. Shortly after the publication of the Book of Mormon, elders are sent out to spread the word and the kingdom experiences rapid growth. From his early days as a money-digger to his final days as a martyred prophet, the life of Joseph Smith is a mixture of adoration and apostasy from his people, blended with the ever present friction brought on by suspicion and mistrust from those he called gentiles—non-believers. Joseph Smith was a colorful and dramatic person, charismatic and easy to love, but like a double edged sword or a two-sided coin, the story also tells of a man with a talent for getting on other peoples’ nerves. It was those others’ who called him Holy Joe, but everyone who read the newspapers of the day, and those with him in the midst of the action, knew the prophet had this other name. Today, this other name grabs attention and speaks of a multifaceted personality: ‘prophet, seer and revelator, yes; but he was also known as Holy Joe.