Category: Book Reviews
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Book Review: Contemporary Mormonism: Latter-day Saints in Modern America
Today I abandon my personal policy of only writing book reviews that are, on balance, positive.
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Book Review: Celebrating Passover: A Guide to Understanding the Jewish Feast for Latter-day Saints
Easter celebrations and the lack thereof have been a hot topic recently; if you want to add something to your celebration of this season, I highly recommend this book.
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Book Review: Stand As a Witness: The Biography of Ardeth Greene Kapp
We begin with a quiz: How many book-length biographies of LDS women can you name? . . .
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Book Review: The Salt Lake City 14th Ward Album Quilt
In the 1990s, Carol Nielson inherited a quilt. Or, to be more precise, half a quilt. . .
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Book Review: Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
I have a friend –I know her through the homeschooling community–with an interest in the Church. She told me that one of the books that she read about the church was Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. Now, she’s not stupid–she didn’t expect it to be unbiased–but she did want to…
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Book Review: David O. McKay Around the World
Every writer’s worst nightmare actually came true for Hugh J. Cannon: the only copy of his manuscript was “misplaced” by the publisher. . .
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Book Review: Early Christians in Disarray
Can you really understand what the Restoration is if you don’t have your mind around what the Great Apostasy was?
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Book Review: Sister Eternal
Thank you, Elder Uchtdorf and Ben Sowards, for creating the first LDS children’s book that deserves to transcend the LDS market. .
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Nonfiction Books for Children
Most people don’t appreciate the wonderful world of children’s nonfiction books.
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Book Review: Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball
If you liked the recent President McKay biography, you are going to love the new biography of President Kimball.
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Book Review: I Love Mormons: A New Way to Share Christ with Latter-day Saints
The techniques that Evangelicals use to convert Mormons to ‘traditional Christianity’ do not work. The same cannot be said for the method proposed by David L. Rowe in his new book. .
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A Letter to Emma Ray
While David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism is nearly perfect in every way, one thing it doesn’t do is provide an intimate portrait of President McKay. That lacuna is partially filled by Heart Petals: The Personal Correspondence of David Oman McKay to Emma Ray McKay.
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Book Review: The Parenting Breakthrough
You just gotta love any book that has a picture of a seven-year-old boy cleaning a toilet on the cover.
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Book Review: The Book: A History of the Bible
I should warn potential readers: there’s a real danger that you will drool on the pages of Christopher de Hamel’s new book.
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Book Review: David O. McKay: Beloved Prophet
I have mixed feelings about the very presence of Woodger’s David O. McKay: Beloved Prophet. On the one hand, as someone who wants to read biographies of all of the prophets of this dispensation, I’m always happy to see a new addition to the fold. While there are other biographies of President McKay, the pickings…
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Book Review: David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism
Yes, I’m reviewing two books on David O. McKay. My original intention was to review them together (and explore the larger issue of writing faith-promoting as opposed to warts-and-all history), but I decided that wouldn’t be fair. It didn’t seem fair because David O. McKay: Beloved Prophet is a credible entry in the well-established subgenre…
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Book Review: A Statistical Profile of Mormons: Health, Wealth, and Social Life
Anyone and everyone interested in Mormon Studies should read this book.
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Book Review: Back to the Well: Women’s Encounters with Jesus in the Gospels
This statement from The Blog of Happiest Fun got a lot of links from other female bloggernaclites: I would like to spend more time discussing the lives of strong women in the scriptures. Women like Hannah, Deborah, Jael, or Anna the prophetess. There are so many women that I find interesting, and I don’t hear…
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Book Review: Women in Eternity, Women of Zion
Imagine, if you will, that a stalwart member of the Church approached you with some concerns about the theological underpinnings of the Word of Wisdom. What might you do? Castigate him as a rebellious secularizer? Remind her that questioning was the fast road to apostasy?
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Book Review: City Saints
The interaction of the LDS church and its members with New York City is a fascinating topic. Someday, that story will doubtless be the focus of one or more great works of Mormon regional history which will have truly broad appeal to members. And those works will in turn acknowledge City Saints: Mormons in the…
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Book Review: The Latter-day Saint Experience in America
Perhaps you can forgive me for taking one look at the supersized price tag on Terryl L. Givens’ new book The Latter-day Saint Experience in America and assuming that the intended audience was luckless university students operating at the behest of their profligate professors.
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Book Review: Black and Mormon
Any etiquette book will tell you: there are certain topics you just don’t bring up in polite society. Any Mormon will tell you: we have a few topics of our own to add to that list. And one of them is the issue of blacks and the priesthood.