Renowned journalist Don Lattin, longtime reporter for the San Francisco Examiner and more recently the San Francisco Chronicle, interprets the American spiritual and religious landscape since the 60s with insight, wit, and telling reporting. What David Brooks did for the American social and commercial landscape in the bestselling Bobos In Paradise, he does for the spiritual landscape, showing how the 60s have had a profound transformative impact in...

This collection of sermons features the work of Horace Bushnell (1802-18776), an American Congregational minister and theologian. He was born in Connecticut and attended Yale University, graduating in 1827. In 1833 Bushnell was ordained pastor of the Congregational church in Hartford, Connecticut, where he remained until 1859, resigning for health reasons. As a preacher, Dr Bushnell was very effective. Though not a dramatic orator, he was original,...

Where did The Book of Mormon come from? Who was Solomon Spalding and what connection did his manuscript have with Joseph Smith? To answer these questions, this book critically examines key historical documents, personal testimonies, and records of 19th-century Mormon history to examine this "Spalding Enigma." The authors have spent decades collecting and analyzing evidence to conclude that The Book of Mormon is, an "adaptation of an obscure, historical...

Though the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion, it does not specify what counts as a religion. From its founding in the 1830s, Mormonism, a homegrown American faith, drew thousands of converts but far more critics. In "A Peculiar People", J. Spencer Fluhman offers a comprehensive history of anti-Mormon thought and the associated passionate debates about religious authenticity in nineteenth-century America. He argues that understanding...

Credible history vs. revisionist hearsay, Answering faith crisis with real history. A story of magic, murder and betrayal. Seer Stone v. Urim and Thummim places the Book of Mormon translation on trial, presenting the latest research in one of the most comprehensive treatments of the translation process to date providing encouragement for Latter-day Saints who fear they have been "betrayed" by the translation history taught by the Church for over 190...

In honor of his newly created religion, Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy renounces his title, property, and family in favor of poverty and celibacy. For the Countess Sofya, his wife of nearly fifty years, this is the last straw! After she discovers his plans to leave the rights to his iconic novels to the Russian people rather than his own family, she decides to use every trick of seduction in her considerable arsenal, to fight for what she believes is...

The nineteenth-century history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Max Perry Mueller argues, illuminates the role that religion played in forming the notion of three "original" American races-red, black, and white-for Mormons and others in the early American Republic. Recovering the voices of a handful of black and Native American Mormons who resolutely wrote themselves into the Mormon archive, Mueller threads together historical experience...

This book is a series of papers presented mainly at the Book of Mormon Round Table. It lays out a case for considering the Mormon scripture as the work of Joseph Smith in the nineteenth century, not an ancient document written by various Israelites in ancient America. But, author Robert M. Price argues, this is merely another case of "pseudepigraphy," the genre of fictive "as if" authorship common to the Bible as well. Price urges readers to a new...

Enjoy this Dan Jones' classic which contains a fast-paced narrative of his many journeys across the American West, the difficult and sometimes secret jobs he did for Brigham Young, his adventures with Indians and outlaws, and finally his perilous missionary journey into Old Mexico.