**Winner of the Philip Schaff Prize (for best book on the history of Christianity by a North American scholar)New Yorker — "Best Books of 2024"Finalist, Best Book in Utah History, Utah Historical SocietyThe first major history of Mormonism in a decade, drawing on newly available sources to reveal a profoundly divided faith that has nevertheless shaped the nation.**The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 in t...

Best Book Award • Mormon History AssociationA brilliant young historian excavates the brief life of a lost Mormon city, uncovering a “grand, underappreciated saga in American history” (Wall Street Journal).In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park draws on newly available sources to re-create the founding and destruction of the Mormon city of Nauvoo. On the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois, the early Mormons built a religious utopia, estab...

America was born in an age of political revolution throughout the Atlantic world, a period when the very definition of 'nation' was transforming. Benjamin E. Park traces how Americans imagined novel forms of nationality during the country's first five decades within the context of European discussions taking place at the same time. Focusing on three case studies - Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina - Park examines the developing practices of nationalism in three specific conte...

Few lives have been as consequential for modern Mormonism as D. Michael Quinn. The son of a Mexican immigrant father and a California Mormon mother, Quinn became an influential participant in the New Mormon History movement. Much of his scholarly work remains classic in the field. Yet while he was publicly celebrated for his award-winning books and articles, he privately struggled to reconcile his sexuality with his faith. Eventually, his revisionist scholarship and homosexuality placed hi...

The first major history of Mormonism in a decade, drawing on newly available sources to reveal a profoundly divided faith that has nevertheless shaped the nation.The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 in the so-called "burned-over district" of upstate New York, which was producing seers and prophets daily. Most of the new creeds flamed out; Smith's would endure, becoming the most significant homegrown religion in America...

An extraordinary story of faith and violence in nineteenth-century America, based on previously confidential documents from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.Compared to the Puritans, Mormons have rarely gotten their due, often treated as fringe cultists or marginalized polygamists unworthy of serious examination. In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park excavates the brief, tragic life of a lost Mormon city, demonstrating that the Mormons are ...

A collection of original essays exploring the history of the various American religious traditions and the meaning of their many expressionsThe Blackwell Companion to American Religious History explores the key events, significant themes, and important movements in various religious traditions throughout the nation’s history from pre-colonization to the present day. Original essays written by leading scholars and new voices in the field discuss how religio...

This book brings together scholars to unpack the religious ideas, themes, motifs, texts, traditions, and practices that suffuse anime. Immensely popular with Western audiences since the 1980s, anime continues to be a prominent medium through which contemporary people, especially younger generations, are engaging ideas about God or ultimate reality, the world, and the self. This volume brings an academic lens to anime and shows the central role that religion plays in the intellectual and vi...

Durable social connections are priceless resources for support, companionship, and opportunity. They make life worth living. However, not everyone has equal access to these seemingly free social resources. Like many other valuable things in life, 'social capital' is both a source and a consequence of inequality throughout the population – something that reinforces the status quo and existing social hierarchies. In Friends and Fortunes, the authors painstakingly document that the distributi...

Do scientists speak truth to power? During the Cold War, a group of American strategists and science advisors claimed to do precisely that. Styling themselves as figures of rationality and restraint, they insisted that mutual assured destruction was the natural logic of the atomic age: as long as nuclear deterrence was credible, no one would ever shoot first. This doctrine, known as "strategic stability," became the foundation of the arms control movement. But in this counterhistory, Benja...

Benjamin Parke DeWitt's study of the Progressive Era represents a comprehensive history of the theory and practice of politics from a progressive perspective. His account of the history and projections about the future of the progressive science of politics provided the American liberal-progressive tradition with its first full narrative history at a time when it was not yet the dominant interpretation of the American political order. Its greatest importance, however, lies in DeWitt's conc...

The first biography of the great Shawnee leader in more than twenty years, and the first to make clear that his misunderstood younger brother, Tenskwatawa, was an equal partner in the last great pan-Indian alliance against the United States.Until the Americans killed Tecumseh in 1813, he and his brother Tenskwatawa were the co-architects of the broadest pan-Indian confederation in United States history. In previous accounts of Tecumseh's life, Tenskwatawa has been ...