The story of the western movement runs deep in American and Mormon history. The rolling of wagons west toward Oregon, California, and Utah is as basic to our national experience as Plymouth Rock and Independence…
In an 1842 description of Latter-day Saint beliefs written for John Wentworth of the Chicago Democrat, Joseph Smith said: “We believe in the same organization that existed in the primitive church, viz. apostles, prophets, pastors,…
I was anxious to review this biography of the founder of eight nineteenth-century newspapers in and near western Illinois (including the Warsaw Message), the author of The History of Hancock County, and, especially, the author of…
You don’t have to be consumed with genealogical passion to profit from this new work of far-reaching and fundamental importance, though those who are will buy it as a matter of course and use it…
Samuel Johnson coined the phrase, and Virginia Woolf gave it its place in the language: the “common reader.” That per son, Doctor Johnson wrote, by whose common sense, “uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the…
John Roche published a very thick book of essays a number of years ago. He was, he lamented, an essayist in an age when the essay was not flourishing. Fortunately this did not prevent publication.…
Tom looked at the sweat shining in the palms of his hands. Wiping them on his slacks, he opened the door into the stake president’s office and sat in a chair against the wall. A…
Ardmoore told Carmen Stavely, who’d been away in Idaho visiting family, that what happened that Sunday morning was absolutely confidential. The bishop had instructed all who’d been present to keep the matter strictly to themselves;…
On the first Sunday after my fourteenth birthday, I was given the responsibility to watch over the Church and see that all the members did their duty, and also to prevent iniquity, hardness with each…
William B. Smith was a difficult man. Like so many who feel denied power and recognition, he was probably best described as being his own worst enemy. Certainly he could not be stereotyped as the…