Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

The vast majority of the books considered in the accompanying compilation are of a biographical, fictional, doctrinal or inspirational nature. While the biographies and works on local history are generally intended for a rather limited audience, the remaining works all too frequently are written because they will sell rather than for what insight they might convey. 

Peter Bart’s Thy Kingdom Come, “the first novel that has ever pierced the Zion Curtain” (in one reviewer’s opinion), is by far the most provocative and dramatic of the works included: “Skeleton after skeleton is hauled out of the closet, from the status of women to polygamous cults.” 

Far more useful is Lawrence Foster’s Religion and Sexuality, one of two studies on the Shakers, the Mormons and the Oneida Community published recently. Stanley B. Kimball’s study of Heber C. Kimball, and Klaus J. Hansen’s Mormonism and the American Experience, also have captured considerable attention. 

Of greatest potential significance to Mormons is the Ehat and Cook annotated compendium of The Words of Joseph Smith that provides a historically rigorous alternative to much of Joseph Fielding Smith’s Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. 

Linda Thatcher’s bibliography of recent dissertations and theses reflects a continued willingness on the part of our institutions of higher learning to encourage scholarly inquiry, despite the reality that much of what is produced will be read by only a handful.