After Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt was the most influential figure in early Mormon history and culture. Missionary, pamphleteer, theologian, historian, and martyr, Pratt was perennially stalked by controversy--regarded, he said, "almost as an Angel by thousands and counted an Imposter by tens of thousands."

Tracing the life of this colorful figure from his hardscrabble origins in upstate New York to his murder in 1857, Terryl Givens and Matthew Grow explore the crucial role Pratt played in the formation and expansion of early Mormonism. One of countless ministers...

Parley P. Pratt joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830 and was murdered in 1857 by the estranged husband of his twelfth plural wife. An original member of the Church s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Pratt played a key leadership role for the Mormons. His writings, including poetry, apologetics, and an autobiography, helped define Mormon theology and identity, and his hymns remain popular today.

Arguably Mormonism s most influential early leader after Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, Pratt is also one of its least understood. This collection of essays uses Pratt s...

Until his death in 1877, Brigham Young guided the religious, economic, and political life of the Mormon community, whose settlements spread throughout the West and provoked a profound political, legal, and even military confrontation with the American nation. Young first met Thomas L. Kane on the plains of western Iowa in 1846. Young came to rely on Kane, 21 years his junior, as his most trusted outside adviser, making Kane the most important non-Mormon in the history of the Church. In return, no one influenced the direction of Kane's life more than Young. The letters exchanged by the two...

This book contains fifteen essays, each first presented as the annual Tanner Lecture at the conference of the Mormon History Association by a leading scholar. Renowned in their own specialties but relatively new to the study of Mormon history at the time of their lectures, these scholars approach Mormon history from a wide variety of perspectives, including such concerns as gender, identity creation, and globalization.

Several of these essays place Mormon history within the currents of American religious history--for example, by placing Joseph Smith and other Latter-day Saints in...

This book contains fifteen essays, each first presented as the annual Tanner Lecture at the conference of the Mormon History Association by a leading scholar. Renowned in their own specialties but relatively new to the study of Mormon history at the time of their lectures, these scholars approach Mormon history from a wide variety of perspectives, including such concerns as gender, identity creation, and globalization.

Several of these essays place Mormon history within the currents of American religious history--for example, by placing Joseph Smith and other Latter-day Saints in...