Volume 14, No. 1

Though Brigham Young sermons were often full of exaggerations, he was right on the mark when he said,  To accomplish this work there will have to be not only one temple but thousands of them,…

Few topics seem to engage the interest of the Latter-day Saints more vigorously than that of the Second Coming of Christ. Over the years, numerous books treating this topic have issued from the Mormon press.…

Anticipation of a final curtain in the drama of existence, an “end” toward which history moves, has been a critical and persistent concept in Christian thought. Millennial expectations have flourished since the days of the…

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…

(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.

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. 

Pictures in books suggest 
That I first stood grey and white 
On short black kodak grass. 

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…

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 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…

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…

We Mormons put a lot of stock in the Local Boy Makes Good syndrome: we’re proud of our Osmonds, our Marriotts, our Jack Andersons, and we’re anxious to let people out there know that we…

In an earlier best-seller, Loose Change, Sara Davidson documented the impact of the Sixties on her fictionalized self and two other intelligent females. Real Property moves on into the Seventies, but not in novel form.…

That last bastion of privacy—our personal diaries—has now been turned into a “program.” From the pulpit, we are admonished to keep diaries; we are treated to snatches of personal diaries in sacrament meeting, we are…

Be advised: a biography that thanks “team members” for accommodating “impossible scheduling” just might be thrown together hastily. And in spite of an attempt to lend an aura of authenticity to the book by acknowledging…