Signature Books imprint: 43 books
The Mormon Hierarchy
Origins of Power
Language: English
Release Date: October 4, 2017
Converts to Joseph Smith’s 1828 restoration of primitive Christianity were attracted to the non-hierarchical nature of the movement. It was precisely because there were no priests, ordinances, or dogma that people joined in such numbers. Smith intended everyone to be a prophet, and anyone who...
Mormon Polygamy
A History
Language: English
Release Date: March 15, 2017
In this comprehensive survey of Mormon Polygamy, Richard Van Wagoner details, with precision and detachment, the tumultuous reaction among insiders and outsiders to plural marriage. In an honest, methodical way, he traces the origins, the peculiarities common to the midwestern and later Utah periods,...
Things in Heaven and Earth
The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff
Language: English
Release Date: August 15, 1993
Wilford Woodruff converted to the LDS church in 1833, he joined a millenarian group of a few thousand persecuted believers clustered around Kirtland, Ohio. When he died sixty-five years later in 1898, he was the leader of more than a quarter of a million followers worldwide who were on the verge...
Lost Apostles
Forgotten Members of Mormonism's Original Quorum of the Twelve
Language: English
Release Date: May 15, 2014
Before the LDS Church was organized, Joseph Smith received a revelation telling him that twelve men would be called as latter-day apostles. Their assignment would be to warn men and women that the end was near. Although the determination of who would fill these positions was delayed for five...
The Council of Fifty
A Documentary History
Language: English
Release Date: December 20, 2014
Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith had both millennial and temporal aspirations for the organization he called the Council of Fifty, named after the number of men who were intended to comprise it. Organized a few months before Smith’s death in June 1844, it continued under Brigham Young as...
by Levi S. Peterson
Language: English
Release Date: February 15, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: February 15, 2013
Recognized as a Mormon classic twenty years after its release,The Backslider features longstanding Christian conflicts played out in a scenic, sparsely populated area of southern Utah. A young ranch-hand, Frank Windham, conceives of God as an implacable enemy of human appetite. He is a dedicated...
Salamander
The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders
Language: English
Release Date: April 15, 2006
Drawing from thousands of pages of police reports, court documents, interviews, letters, and diaries, Sillitoe’s and Roberts’s narrative cuts through the complexities of this famous crime investigation to deliver a gripping, Capote-esque tale. They embrace the details but lay them out systematically...
Utah's Lawless Fringe
Stories of True Crime
Language: English
Release Date: February 10, 2018
It was Sunday and worship service was in progress. One of the settlers who was not attending service eyed four known outlaws passing near town. He raced to church to spread the alarm, and parishioners leaped up, grabbed their guns, and galloped off in pursuit, joined by some neighboring cattlemen....
Confessions of a Mormon Historian
The Diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997: Volume 1, Church Historian, 1971-75
Language: English
Release Date: April 30, 2018
Leonard Arrington (1917–99) was born an Idaho chicken rancher whose early interests seemed not to extend much beyond the American west. Throughout his life, he tended to project a folksy persona, although nothing was farther from the truth.
He was, in fact, an intellectually oriented, academically...
Island Adventures
The Hawaiian Mission of Francis A. Hammond, 1851-1865
Language: English
Release Date: April 15, 2016
Francis (“Frank”) Hammond was not an average Mormon pioneer. After breaking his back working on a whaling ship off the coast of Siberia in 1844, he was set ashore on the island of Maui to heal. While there he set up shop as a shoemaker and learned the local language. Three years later,...
The Mormon Hierarchy
Extensions of Power
Language: English
Release Date: January 15, 1997
The Mormon church today is led by an elite group of older men, nearly three-quarters of whom are related to current or past general church authorities. This dynastic hierarchy meets in private; neither its minutes nor the church’s finances are available for public review. Members are reassured...
Pedestals and Podiums
Utah Women, Religious Authority, and Equal Rights
Language: English
Release Date: October 15, 2005
Almost from the beginning, the women’s movement has been divided into two factions–those wanting full equality with men (Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul) and those seeking legal protections for women’s particular needs (Julia Ward Howe, Eleanor Roosevelt). Early Utah leaders such as Relief Society...
Nauvoo Polygamy
"…but we called it celestial marriage"
Language: English
Release Date: May 15, 2011
“This is a meticulously researched and skillfully written work on Mormon polygamy. The author does not take sides in this tangled web of theology and practice, but instead has produced what may well be the definitive work on polygamy. I highly recommend it.” —Linda King Newell, co-author, Mormon...
Being Different
Stories of Utah Minorities
Language: English
Release Date: November 15, 2001
Ethnic studies can be full of surprises, pathos, and nostalgia, in Utah as elsewhere. In this anthology, fourteen gifted historians consider such issues as the collision of white settlers and Shoshones in northern Utah and the initial trouble with Salt Lake City residents when all-black troops were...