Alex Beam: American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith & The Fate of the Mormon Church

Their founder was Joseph Smith. In the 1820s, Smith began to translate, from tablets he kept wrapped in a tablecloth, a series of visions that became the Book of Mormon, a turgid sci-fi novel that nonetheless managed to sway a nucleus of converts. Smith also managed to be so provocative that he and his followers found themselves hounded, in a series of increasingly dramatic upheavals, from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois. Alex Beam's "American Crucifixion" recounts the journey of these outcasts. Before they finally evacuated to the Great Salt Lake Valley, which was then part of Mexico, they thought they had found a safe haven in Nauvoo, Ill., the most elaborate of Smith's foundations. Thence, from all over the United States, Canada and the British Isles, the Mormons flocked. At one point, the city's population may have surpassed Chicago's. But Smith's gift for outrageousness prevailed, and in June 1844 a mob lynched him and his brother. Smith was 38 years old. Sponsored by the Moses Greeley Parker Lecture Series