This book contains a lot of useful information about the background of many early Mormons. Brooke shows that Mormonism cannot be seen as an offshoot of Puritanism, but is more closely related to dissenting and radical sects. Nonetheless, Brooke's attempt to show that Mormonism is "gnostic" or occultic falls flat. Buy Now!

John Taylor's brief declaration of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, which later became Section 135 in the Doctrine and Covenants, tells only part of the history of these events. Witness To The Martyrdom is an edited version of John Taylor's complete narrative compiled by the great-great-grandson of John Taylor. An important historical contribution to LDS literature, this book details events leading up to and culminating with the martyrdom. Buy Now!

Hicks (music, Brigham Young U.) traces the music's growth since 1830, examining the changing attitudes of church officialdom and laity toward popular and non-Western music styles. Buy Now!

Essays about the life of the Prophet Joseph Smith's wife. Buy Now!

Tending The Garden is a collection of fifteen brilliant essays on Mormon literature. In addition to describing the historical development of Mormon letters, essayists explore Mormon contributions to aesthetics, folklore, personal essay, home literature, novels, and historical tragedy. Of special note
are Edward Geary's "Mormondom's Lost Generation: The Novelists of the 1940s"; Eugene England's "Beyond 'Jack Fiction': Recent Achievement in the Mormon Novel"; and Tory Anderson's "Just the Fiction, Ma'am". Tending The Garden is a benchmark scholarship publication in the field of Mormon literature. Buy Now!

The author "argues that 'the idea of cosmology is one central organizing theme in Mormonism,' and he concludes that Mormonism 'has embraced an epistemological, though cautious relationship with modern science. Buy Now!

In Our Lovely Deseret: Mormon Fictions is a collection of contemporary short fiction with Mormons as characters and Mormonism as a cultural setting. Unlike some Mormon fiction, it is not doctrinally oriented, or intended to teach or inspire faith. Rather, these are stories about living as and among Mormons, with all the attendant experiences and emotions. This collection includes stories by some of the premier writers at work today, as well as some relatively unknown newcomers. Buy Now!

Bright Angels and Familiars anthologizes the full sweep of contemporary Mormon short fiction. Beginning with Virginia Sorensen and Maurine Whipple, the best of Mormondom's "lost generation" of the 1940s-50s, it progresses to Douglas Thayer and Donald R. Marshall, the first in the 1970s-80s to produce complete collections of short stories; and to Lewis Horne and Levi S. Peterson, the first to be nationally published and honored. It concludes with recent and increasingly prominent writers such as Phyllis Barber, John Bennion, Orson Scott Card, Neal Chandler, Judith Freeman, Walter Kirn, and Margaret Blair Young. Buy Now!

Until very recently, black Latter-day Saints were excluded from priesthood office in the church. In this revealing study, Embry culls answers from both oral history interviews and mailed surveys to determine how the age-old stereotypes and differences are disappearing as African-Americans are being assimilated into the church. Buy Now!

The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of LDS's version of the book translated by the prophet Joseph Smith. Buy Now!