Chad Nielsen’s Favorite Reads, 2024 edition

As I did last year, in case it’s of use to anyone, I’ve prepared a list of my top 10 books that I’ve read this last year. (That can include books that were not published within the last year, though the majority of them were published in 2023 or 2024). Also, since I published 25 book reviews in 2024, I’ll include links to those reviews and relevant excerpts for the books where that is applicable.

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Favorite books read in 2024:

1. American Zion: A New History of Mormonism by Benjamin Park (Liveright, 2024). As I said in my review, “If I were to ever write a single-volume history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I hope that it would turn out like Benjamin E. Park’s American Zion: A New History of Mormonism (Liveright, 2024). It is a very nuanced, insightful, and well-written take on Latter-day Saint history in the United States. It takes into account viewpoints from many different groups that have been a part of the Latter-day Saint movement over the years or who have split from the Church into their own faith communities.”
2. Annotated Book of Mormon is such a big deal. Ever since discovering the Oxford Annotated Bible, I’ve wanted something like this, and Grant Hardy really delivers across the board. Full of insightful introductions to each of the books in the Book of Mormon, footnotes, and essays, it adds a lot to studying a volume of scripture I’ve read many times. 
3. Open Canon: Scriptures of the Latter Day Saint Tradition, edited by Christine Elyse Blythe, Christopher James Blythe, and Jay Burton was, as I’ve said before, “a book that I loved reading. It is an anthology of essays focusing on the documents created and used as scripture in the broader tradition of religions that trace their roots to the early Latter Day Saint movement. The focus on the creation and reception of texts, the various branches of the Smith-Rigdon movement, and thoughts about texts that could be considered non-canonical scriptures are all right up my alley, and given the quality of research being presented, I devoured the whole volume.”
4. Saints, Volume 4 is a big step forward in official institutional history, both for its work to discuss recent history of the Church and in its ability to inspire living the gospel.
5. Christian Theology: An Introduction is an older textbook that I read this summer. I’ll eventually get around to writing posts to process it, but it was a really insightful read.
6. This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah by W. Paul Reeve, Christopher B. Rich Jr., and LaJean Purcell Carruth is a fascinating and detailed glimpse into the debates about slavery and race in Utah Territory in the 1850s. Incorporating never-before transcribed accounts of the 1852 legislative session that saw Utah Territory leadership pass a series of laws intended to regulate unfree labor, this volume provides a thorough analysis of those laws, the debates that surrounded them and how they fit into the national context of the United States at the time. In doing so, the book also offers insights into the early development of the priesthood and temple ban against individuals with Black African ancestry in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
7. Second Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality by Matthew Harris. As I put it in my review, ” I would put Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality by Matthew L. Harris up there with W. Paul Reeve’s Religion of a Different Color and Armand L. Mauss’s All Abraham’s Children as required reading related to the race and priesthood ban in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is an excellent, if painful, look into racism and its effects on the people in the Church that is worth reading.”
8. A Frontier Life: Jacob Hamblin, Explorer and Indian Missionary by Todd M. Compton was published over a decade ago, but I enjoyed discovering it this summer. Dealing with the explorations of a remarkable man and the interactions of Latter-day Saints and Native Americans in the region, this biography drew together a lot of information in a very readable way.
9. Temples in the Tops of the Mountains: Sacred Houses of the Lord in Utah by Richard O. Cowan and Clinton D. Christensen (BYU RSC and Deseret Book Company, 2023) was a great contribution to the history of temples in Utah in a beautiful format with lots of illustrations to reinforce the stories being told. I particularly appreciated the coverage of the Ogden Temple, as that was my home temple for many years.
10. As It Shall Be Given Thee: Reading Doctrine and Covenants 25: Proceedings of the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar, ed. Joseph M. Spencer and Rosalynde Frandsen Welch was a collection of essays delving into the details of the revelation to Emma Smith and probing theological implications of that document. While a few of the essays went a bit far into philosophical directions that didn’t fit my taste, I loved the vast majority of the collection, especially a chapter by Rachel Cope on ungendering the text and another chapter by Jenny Reeder on atonement. Especially as we’re going into the Doctrine and Covenants year, I recommend picking up a copy and reading through it.

Honorable mentions (in no particular order): 

• Come Up Hither to Zion: William Marks and the Mormon Concept of Gathering by Cheryl L. Bruno and John S. Dinger 
• Latter-day Saint Perspectives on Atonement, ed. Deidre Nicole Green and Eric D. Huntsman (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2024)
• A Documentary History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Mexico, 1875-1946  by Fernando R. Gomez
• A Word in Season: Isaiah’s Reception in the Book of Mormon by Joseph M. Spencer (University of Illinois Press, 11/21/2023)
• Joseph Smith’s Uncanonized Revelations, edited by Stephen O. Smoot and Brian C. Passantino
• Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy, edited by Cheryl L. Bruno
• Buffalo Bill and the Mormons by Brent M. Rogers

In addition, I will just mention my own book as an additional honorable mention:

Fragments of Revelation: Exploring the Book of Doctrine and Covenants by Chad Nielsen