Brigham Young comes to life in this superlative biography that presents him as a Mormon leader, a business genius, a family man, a political organizer, and a pioneer of the West. Drawing on a vast range of sources, including documents, personal diaries, and private correspondence, Leonard J. Arrington brings Young to life as a towering yet fully human figure, the remarkable captain of his people and his church for thirty years, who combined piety and the pursuit of power to leave an indelible stamp on Mormon society and the culture of the Western frontier. From polygamy to the Mountain Meadows Massacre to the attempted preservation of Young’s Great Basin Kingdom, we are given a fresh understanding of the controversies that plagued Young in his contentious relations with the federal government. Brigham Young draws its subject out of the marginal place in history to which the conventional wisdom has assigned him, and sets him squarely in the American mainstream, a figure of abiding influence in our society to this day.

Few American religious figures have stirred more passion among adherents and antagonists than Joseph Smith. Born in 1805 and silenced thirty-nine years later by assassins’ bullets, he dictated more than one-hundred revelations, published books of new scripture, built a temple, organized several new cities, and became the proclaimed prophet to tens of thousands during his abbreviated life. Among his many novel teachings and practices, none is more controversial than plural marriage, a restoration of the Old Testament practice that he accepted as part of his divinely appointed mission. Joseph Smith taught his polygamy doctrines only in secret and dictated a revelation in July 1843 authorizing its practice (now LDS D&C 132) that was never published during his lifetime. Although rumors and exposés multiplied, it was not until 1852 that Mormons in Brigham Young’s Utah took a public stand. By then, thousands of Mormons were engaged in the practice that was seen as essential to salvation. Victorian America saw plural marriage as immoral and Joseph Smith as acting on libido. However, the private writings of Nauvoo participants and other polygamy insiders tell another, more complex and nuanced story. Many of these accounts have never been published. Others have been printed sporadically in unrelated publications. Drawing on every known historical account, whether by supporters or opponents, Volumes 1 and 2 take a fresh look at the chronology and development of Mormon polygamy, including the difficult conundrums of the Fannie Alger relationship, polyandry, the “angel with a sword” accounts, Emma Smith’s poignant response, and the possibility of Joseph Smith offspring by his plural wives. Among the most intriguing are the newly available Andrew Jenson papers containing not only the often-quoted statements by surviving plural wives but also Jenson’s own private research, conducted in the late nineteenth century. Telling the story of Joseph Smith’s polygamy from the records of those who knew him best, augmented by those who observed him from a distance, may have produced the most useful view of all.

The three volumes of My Own Pioneers together tell a remarkable story of the desperate pioneer struggles of four generations of the author’s family. Although the memorable historical journey begins seven generations ago, these three volumes of stories focus on four important pioneer generation. They are the culmination of fifteen years of painstaking research as the author carefully reconstructs her family’s pioneer struggles from before 1830 to 1918 using information from family records, journals, memoirs, histories and letters, supplemented by accounts from their pioneer companions, and by Church and other official records. Volume I tells about the author’s once prosperous pioneer families survived the French and Indian War and the War of 1812, then eventually relocated to join the newly founded Mormon Church. The stories tell how the pressure of mobs and mob wars eventually forced these families to abandon everything as they were driven from place to place, until they found themselves exiled on the western-most border of the United States—at the Missouri River—looking toward the wild and hostile West as their only refuge. Stories describe how dozens of family members were among the Mormon refugees who died by the hundreds at the Missouri River, of illness, starvation and exposure. Yet family members had managed to journey among Indians on the frontier to preach, and had sailed through nearly catastrophic ocean storms to preach in England. And despite much sorrow and hardship, this volume relates how five family members left their loved ones behind at the sickly Missouri River in order to march down the Old Santa Fe Trail in the U.S. Army’s Mormon Battalion to prove their loyalty to the government by helping to fight a war with Mexico.