Print-on-Demand Books

Hopeful and heartbreaking, sobering and exultant. A Call to Russia captures missionary life as experienced by a mission president, his wife and daughter, and the sisters and elders who served under him. But above all, this book is an invitation to reflect upon our own lives. Some glimpses from President Rogers: “Every morning Merriam still wakes up and asks, ‘Where am I?’ while I shake off the night’s slumber and involuntarily ask, ‘Who am I?’” “Our senior district president recently asked me, ‘What are your greatest impressions since coming here?’ I answered, ‘Faith and love. Love and faith.’ And the way things seem to fall apart on at least a weekly basis before they’re somehow put back together.” “In our quest to see God’s face, what most matters in mortality is how we face one another—with what patience, tenderness, mercy, and good humor.” “Another great blessing—a mission makes us more aware than otherwise of our personal inadequacies.” “A friend wrote me, ‘You’ve certainly changed.’ It’s good others can see how the gospel has indeed changed us—how we have repented. As a great assistant to the president put it, ‘The best missionary is a repenting missionary.’” “We all confront, all the time, a choice between two paths. One is higher, with steeper terrain, where you often strain to catch your breath or to reach a handhold. The other lies well below it and tends if anything toward a gradual and easy descent.”

This massive dissertation, originally over 500 pages in length, is filled with impressive details about the settlement, troubles, and expulsion of the Latter-day Saints from northern Missouri, 1836–1839. Since its approval at BYU in 1965, this doctoral dissertation has remained a standard reference work for serious historians. Carefully written and copiously footnoted, this study draws heavily on timeless primary sources as it probes the leading causes for the Mormon War in Missouri. Rapid colonization and the unique religious teachings and practices of the Latter-day Saints are among the main factors emphasized by Dr. Leland H. Gentry. Shortly after the founding of Kirtland, speculation increased among Church members as to the future location of "Zion," the "New Jerusalem" spoken of in the Book of Mormon. A little over a year later, in the course of a visit to the extreme western edge of the American frontier, Joseph Smith was informed by the Lord that he was standing upon the very land "appointed and consecrated for the gathering of his saints, . . . the land of promise, and the place for the city of Zion." The urge to get to Zion was strong among the Saints. So intense was the desire of some to settle upon the Land of Promise that they consummated the move in haste and without adequate preparation. Migrating families often found themselves entirely dependent upon the charity of their neighbors. The rapid migrations of so many poor and ill-equipped persons threw the Saints into direct conflict with the older and more established settlers of Missouri. The latter tended to view the rapid influx of Saints as an act designed to secure control of the lands surrounding their homes without legal purchase, a thing far from the heart of any true Saint. Thus while Mormonism had many distinct and unusual features, it had certain elements of affinity with its age. For one thing, it shared the common hope of a perfect society and even inculcated a practical plan for the attainment of the same. It shared the dream of a "Manifest Destiny" for America and turned its attention to the great unsettled West early in its history. Finally it recognized the importance of land in frontier economics and set about to secure as much as was practicable.

"Iron we need and iron we must have"—so said Brigham Young in 1855. Utah's pioneers depended on it for survival. Necessities, such as nails, stoves, plows and sawmill bearings, required iron, which had to be shipped from St. Louis at great expense. Brigham Young envisioned a regional iron works that would fill the territory's need for iron and help make it economically self-sufficient. In April 1850, Church leaders established an Iron Mission in southern Utah, where iron ore, coal and timber were plentiful. Among these first Iron County settlers were experienced iron workers from the British Isles. Between 1851 and 1858, this colony of hard-working Saints tried many smelting techniques, yielding objects such as pots, crank shafts and bells. Despite sustained, even heroic, efforts, the iron missionaries did not succeed. Nature itself worked against them. Droughts, floods and inferior raw materials challenged them at every turn. When the iron works closed its books in 1858, some of the colonists moved away. Yet the pioneers' legacy is still visible in Parowan and Cedar City—Iron Mission townships that have survived for over 150 years. A Trial Furnace chronicles the lives of people who transcended the practical, finding in their wilderness crucible an inner strength and resilience more durable than the iron they came south to find.

As the century closes, subcultures are being swallowed up by a world culture of mass media and increased secularization. Like a great and abominable church, much of this culture is fundamentally opposed to the principles of the gospel. For twenty-five years, Arthur Henry King has critiqued this mass culture. But he does more. He teaches us to spiritu­ally arm ourselves and our children to win the battle against the destructive forces encompassing us worldwide. King’s talks encourage a deeper commitment to a life of repentance and service and an empathy for the unconverted. They counsel us to turn away from the ugly, vulgar, violent entertainments of our time. Rather, we should seek happiness, not as a goal, but as an activity that includes learning from the best art, music, and literature. By attending to the minute particulars of texts and to the de­tails of everyday living, we free ourselves from traditions that stunt our souls. We open our hearts and minds to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, our souls to the Atonement. Professor King persuasively argues that genuine education begins in homes where parents read the scriptures to and with their children. The language and moral­ity of scripture then form the foundation for learning and judging every activity, art, and discipline. Arm the Children includes all the talks found in King's Abundance of the Heart plus several previously unpublished talks that continue his jeremiad on behalf of us all.

In 1939 when Hitler's armies marched into Poland, the LDS missionaries marched out of Germany and eventually out of continental Europe, leaving a strong and thriving Church in eastern Germany. Through personal interviews with East German Saints, this volume documents the moving personal faith of those Saints who survived World War II and rebuilt Zion during the communist years.

More than a century after Latter-day Saints trekked across the Mormon Trail, Church members continue to celebrate this pioneer experience as an identity-defining touchstone of their American-born religion. Latter-day Saints commemorate their pioneer past in folklore, art, museums, and monuments, as well as with annual plays, pageants, and parades throughout the West.

Twenty-three landmark speeches by Church and University leaders about the religious and academic nature of education in Zion and BYU. These speeches have charted and refined the singular course of LDS higher education. Everyone will want to be familiar with these valuable statements about academic learning in a spiritual atmosphere by some of our greatest educators, including karl G. Maeser, David O. McKay, Hugh B. Brown, Dallin H. Oaks, Rex E. Lee, Jeffrey R. Holland, Boyd K. Packer, Neal A. Maxwell, Gordon B. Hinckley, and Spencer W. Kimball.

Typical histories of the United States talk about the American Revolution as if the only issues were secular or economic, such as offensive regulations or taxation without representation. But religion was also crucial, as demonstrated by this collection of lectures that were delivered in conjunction with the Library of Congress exhibition Religion and the Founding of the American Republic.

Proceedings of the March 2001 symposium of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History at Brigham Young University. This symposium was geared to a diverse audience of scholars, family historians, and students interested in how one writes about a life and more specifically the life of a Latter-day Saint.

Martin Harris: Uncompromising Witness of the Book of Mormon reveals the compelling story of a man who had seen angels and knew Joseph Smith was a prophet but who nevertheless struggled to keep his faith in the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith and the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. His is a story of fascination with worldly honors, flirtations with apostasy, and pride that nearly cost him the joy of his later years in the West. It is the biography of a witness who clung tenaciously to his testimony of the Book of Mormon.  

Well-known historians Susan Black and Larry Porter have written a landmark biography of Martin Harris, one of the most important figures in early Church history. Joseph Smith relied on his generosity and goodwill to publish the Book of Mormon, of which he was one of the Three Witnesses. But Latter-day Saints in the twenty-first century know relatively little about him, especially the decades he spent away from the Restoration—until now. This biography deserves a place on the bookshelves of historians and other interested Church members. Strongly recommend.

Reid L. Neilson Assistant Church Historian and Recorder The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

This deeply researched book examines the life of one of Joseph Smith’s closest associates in the Church’s early years. It tells us more about signifi­cant episodes, such as the printing of the Book of Mormon, than anyone has ever known. Most important, it helps us reassess the character of Martin Harris, a key contributor to the Restoration. Harris emerges as a man of substance and judgment, a fitting witness to the angel and the plates. The book explains how he fell away and then returned but at no time backed away from his testimony.

Richard Lyman Bushman Author, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling

As one of the earliest believers in Joseph Smith’s spiritual claims, Martin Harris figured prominently in the early events of the Restoration. He observed firsthand many of the sacred scenes associated with the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, assisted in its translation, was one of the book’s Three Witnesses, financed its publication, and was one of the first converts baptized into the Church of Christ. Authors Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter have produced an insightful, informative, well-­documented biography of Martin Harris’s lifelong religious sojourn—a life characterized by integrity, faith, and generosity, but most of all, testimony. This is solid, down-to-earth biographical history at its best.

Alexander L. Baugh Professor, Church History and Doctrine, BYU

From living in a dugout called the Castle of Spiders to eating so many weeds their skin took on a green cast to losing four children in just a few weeks to diphtheria, nearly everything imaginable happened to the Mormon settlers of Utah Territory. Here are the details of the lives of the common people⿿what they ate, wore, lived in, and celebrated, how they worshipped, and why they endured. Here are the details of the lives of the common people, those who traveled in the dust of the leaders. What they ate, wore, lived in, and celebrated. How they worshiped. Why they endured. This volume begins with Marlin K. Jensen's eulogy of the uncommonly heroic common Saint. Twenty-one renowned historians then apply nearly every type of source and method imaginable to capture pioneer life's ordinary rhythms and cycles. In Nearly Everything Imaginable, you'll find hundreds of vignettes from Utah's early settlers, including these: Old and young would gather for dancing; everybody came early and left about the midnight hour. The bedrooms opening from the hall were generally filled with babies snugly tucked away, while the mothers enjoyed the dance. The huge fireplaces at either end of the hall were piled high with dry cedar fagots, the flames from which leaped and danced up the chimneys. Candles held in place by three nails driven into wooden brackets were ranged high along the walls. Tickets were paid for in any kind of produce that the fiddlers could be induced to accept. Usually a couple of two-bushel sacks could be seen near the door, into which the dancers deposited their contributions. Father made a plow out of a big forked stock and we boys held it in place while our father pulled it. The stock plow was made of quaking aspen. He fastened it to himself by a strap. We plowed two and a half acres that way, and planted wheat. I always remembered that picture of my father doing the work of a horse.

Joining the Church in 1838 catapulted William Clayton into new activities and associations, took him from England to the United States, and offered him soul-satisfying spiritual experiences. As Joseph Smith’s friend and scribe, Clayton kept extensive journals and was the one who recorded the revelation on plural marriage. He also wrote the first history of the Nauvoo Temple. As a pioneer, Clayton wrote the words to the hymn “Come, Come Ye Saints,” and compiled the Latter-day Saints’ Emigrants’ Guide. He was among Salt Lake City’s original settlers and worked in a variety of religious, economic, and civil activities. Clayton was faithful, but he had his share of human frailties. Even though his wives considered him a good husband—so far as plural marriage allowed—why did some divorce him? William Clayton’s life encompassed nearly all the joys and struggles that could come to a Church member of his day. Yet “no toil nor labor” did he fear. His story, in many respects, echoes the soul-stirring words of his immortal Mormon pioneer anthem.

This anthology is the first to present the full range of Brazilian poetic creativity and beauty in English translation. English editions of modernist and contemporary poets exist, most notably An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry, edited by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil, and the more recent Other Shores: 13 Emerging Brazilian Poets, by Ricardo Corona and Charles A. Perrone. Until now, however, no volume has assembled the works of the great poets of Brazil's earlier periods-those who wrote according to the baroque, neoclassical, romantic, Parnassian, and symbolist styles that were sequentially popular from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.