Mormon History Association

Recommended Books
	General Mormon History
	New York Beginnings
	Kirtland Period
	Missouri Period
	Nauvoo Period
	Utah Period
	Utah War
	Economic LDS History
	Mormon Battalion (Mexican War)
	Mormon Polygamy
	Mountain Meadows Massacre
	Biographies
	Other
	Bibliography
	Extensive Works

Recommended Books - Biographies

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Joseph Smith Rough Stone Rolling

Bushman, Richard Lyman, Knopf

Book description:

Joseph Smith, America's preeminent visionary and prophet, rose from a modest background to found the largest indigenous Christian church in American history. Without the benefit of wealth, education, or social position, he published the 584page Book of Mormon when he was twenty-three; organized a church when he was twenty-four, and founded cities, built temples, and attracted thousands of followers before his violent death at age thirty-eight. Rather than perishing with him, Mormonism migrated to the Rocky Mountains, flourished there, and now claims millions of followers worldwide.

He was controversial from his earliest years. His followers honored him as a man who spoke for God and restored biblical religion. His enemies maligned him as a dangerous religious fanatic, an American Mohammad, and drove the Mormons from every place in which they settled. Smith's ultimate assassination by an armed mob raises the question of whether American democracy can tolerate visionaries.

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Received MHA’s Best Book Award — 2006

Brigham Young, American Moses
Arrington, Leonard J., University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL.
Editorial Review: An historian of the Mormon Church draws on diaries and letters not available to previous biographers to profile the highly gifted and controversial church leader. Buy it now! Received MHA's Best Book Award -- 1985

The Life of John Taylor

Roberts, B.H., Bookcraft, Inc., Salt Lake City, UT.

Online book decription:

Description not available.

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Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet
Alexander, Thomas G., Signature Books, Salt Lake City, UT.
Editorial Review: From the Publisher-- Wilford Woodruff converted to the LDS church in 1833, he joined a millenarian group of a few thousand persecuted believers clustered around Kirtland, Ohio. When he died sixty-five years later in 1898, he was the leader of more than a quarter of a million followers worldwide who were on the verge of entering the mainstream of American culture. Before attaining that status of senior church apostle at the death of John Taylor in 1886, Woodruff had been one of the fiercest opponents of United States hegemony. He spent years evading territorial marshals on the Mormon "underground," escaping prosecution for polygamy, unable even to attend his first wife's funeral. As church president, faced with disfranchisement and federal confiscation of Mormon property, including temples, Woodruff reached his monumental decision in 1890 to accept U.S. law and to petition for Utah statehood. Buy it now! Received MHA's Best Book Award -- 1991

Spencer W. Kimball

Kimball, Edward L., Andrew E. Kimball, Jr., Bookcraft, Inc., Salt Lake City, UT.

Online book description:

Description not available.

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Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, Prophets Wife, "Elect Lady," Polygamy's Foe
Newell, Linda King and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, New York
Book Description: As the wife of the founding prophet of Mormonism, Emma Hale Smith was desigmated by revelation as an "Elect Lady." As the pieces of Emma's life are assembled, there emerges a forthright, quick-witted woman of a compassionate nature who found herself torn between love for her husband and acceptance of his plural wives. Emma Smith's biography illustrates the methods by which nineteenth-century women asserted influence and power in a utopian religious movement, and documents the overwhelming hardships of American frontier life. Buy it now! Received MHA's Best Book Award -- 1984

David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

Prince, Gregory A and Wright, Wm Robert , University of Utah Press, SLC, UT.

Online book description:

Ordained as an apostle in 1906, David O. McKay served as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1951 until his death in 1970. Under his leadership, the church experienced unparalleled growth, nearly tripling in total membership and becoming a significant presence throughout the world. During some of the most turbulent times in American and world history, McKay navigated the church through uncharted waters as it faced the challenges of worldwide growth in an age of communism, the civil rights movement, and ecumenism.

Gregory Prince and Robert Wright have compiled a thorough history of the presidency of a much-loved prophet who left a lasting legacy within the L.D.S. Church.

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Received MHA’s Best Biography Award — 2006