Mormons have long embraced the Constitution of the United States as a special document, even at times citing its various provisions as quasi-scripture. While scriptural evidence supports the view that the Constitution was, or perhaps…
The Mormon intellectual establishment is still relatively young, so it continues to react nervously to publications on Mormonism written by non-Mormons. Serious non-Mormon interpretations often generate more anxiety among practicing Mormon historians and social scientists…
With the exception of a handful of standouts, such as Donna Hill’s work on Joseph Smith, biographies by Mormons of Mormons have been scarcely worth the title. Often reminiscent of mimeographed Christmas letters, these books…
The major theme of Eugene England’s biography is the flowering of Brigham Young’s personality. His strict Methodist upbringing suppressed Brigham’s natural forces and made him a watchful, cautious, somewhat skeptical young man. The Gospel, Joseph…
“Of all the religious sects to emerge out of nineteenth-century America,” as Newsweek’s religion editor Kenneth L. Woodward recently observed, “only the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has developed into a worldwide faith.”…
Pictures in books suggest
That I first stood grey and white
On short black kodak grass.
The magpies sang all morning long that May
To lovers in the gum leaves where they lie.
Half my heart is half a world away.
(25 November 1975—Los Angeles)
Already cold, your quiet body lies,
The ravage done, small protest to the sheet.
Beyond your window through November skies,
Sycamore leaves go drifting to the street.
Mary Mahoney, a devout Catholic, left Kentucky and came west to Basalt, Idaho, where she met her future husband on the steps of the old LDS ward house. She was a Mormon for the remaining…
I am honored by the invitation to write a tribute to Fawn McKay Brodie. Professor Brodie was no doubt the most widely known and read of all Mormon writers, a historian of distinction whose work…