Over the past thirty years, an enormous amount of research has been conducted into Mormon origins—Joseph Smith's early life, the Book of Mormon, the prophet's visions, and the restoration of priesthood authority. Longtime LDS educator Grant H. Palmer suggests that most Latter-day Saints remain unaware of the significance of these discoveries, and he gives a brief survey for anyone who has ever wanted to know more about these issues.

Ethnic studies can be full of surprises, pathos, and nostalgia, in Utah as elsewhere. In this anthology, fourteen gifted historians consider such issues as the collision of white settlers and Shoshones in northern Utah and the initial trouble with Salt Lake City residents when all-black troops were garrisoned at Forts Douglas and Duchesne ...

Whenever the quorum discussed Elder Pratt's controversial sermons and writings and his streak of independent thinking, the conversation could become heated. As documented by Gary James Bergera in this surprisingly suspenseful account, Pratt's encounters with his brethren ultimately affected not only his seniority in the Quorum of the Twelve but also had a lasting impact on LDS doctrine, policy, and organizational structure

Is there anything new under the sun? No, says the preacher in Ecclesiastes. Yes, says Signature Books. There is a new book out, and it's a good one—458 pages of the most interesting discussion of current LDS topics you could find anywhere. Edited by Stephen C. Taysom, Professor of Religious Studies at Cleveland State University, it contains essays by fifteen contributors in what the editor calls the most important...

The first Americans out West gravitated to existing pockets of Spanish culture in New Mexico and along the California coast—so much so that in 1860 the U.S. census takers could not locate a single town in Idaho or Montana. They found only twenty-three settlements in present-day Nevada.

In this ground-breaking book, D. Michael Quinn masterfully reconstructs an earlier age, finding ample evidence for folk magic in nineteenth-century New England, as he does in Mormon founder Joseph Smith's upbringing. Quinn discovers that Smith's world was inhabited by supernatural creatures whose existence could be both symbolic and real.

The first hint Irene had about her new husband, Robert E. Kleasen, was when she found him in the bathtub smearing his naked body with the entrails of a freshly gutted deer. She bolted—as the two young missionaries who had dinner at his trailer in Austin, Texas, in 1974 should have done.

The Bancroft Library, one of the premier research institutions in the world, was founded in 1859 by Hubert H. Bancroft, a San Francisco bookseller, publisher, and collector. The documents and artifacts he amassed on the American West—from Alaska to Panama—were unsurpassed. In 1906 the University of California acquired the Bancroft collection and now celebrates the centennial of that acquisition. Over the past century, the library has expanded to include...

For more than 150 years the story of Mormon origins has been rewritten to a point where only fragments remain of the original. This book restores much of the human drama and detail. Moving from village to village, the Joseph Smith, Sr., family lived in constant poverty. When in 1825 Joseph, Sr., a cooper, defaulted on the family’s final mortgage payment, he and his nineteen-year-old son, Joseph Jr., traveled...

In Line Upon Line, sixteen thoughtful, compelling essays offer reflective historical discussions of the development of Mormon doctrine from the statements of church leaders to the writings of LDS theologians to canonized scripture, rather than on the authors' personal speculations.