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A Peculiar People: The Mystical And Pragmatic Appeal Of Mormonism, Kenneth Anderson
A Peculiar People: The Mystical And Pragmatic Appeal Of Mormonism, Kenneth Anderson
Book Reviews
This 1999 Los Angeles Times Book Review essay examines Richard and Joan Ostling's account of contemporary Mormonism in the United States. Richard Ostling, a reporter for Time Magazine, obtained extensive access to Mormon Church officials in the course of researching the book, and it gives the fullest account available currently of Mormon life in America. The review finds the book to be very evenhanded and objective, and perhaps the best introduction to the Mormon faith extant today, whether by Mormon church members or non-members.
The Magi Of The Great Salt Lake, Kenneth Anderson
The Magi Of The Great Salt Lake, Kenneth Anderson
Book Reviews
This 1995 Times Literary Supplement (London) review examines John L. Brooke's impressive The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology 1644-1844. Brooke argues against long prevailing scholarship that, on the one hand, views Mormon theology as genuinely American and, on the other hand, understands it purely functionally - without regard for its theological content, but instead as a function of social pressures on impoverished populations in upstate New York from whence came Joseph Smith. The former view is incorrect, Brooke says, because the roots of Mormon theology lie in Europe in gnostic and splinters of the "radical reformation" that lay …