Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia

by W. Paul Reeve (Editor), Ardis E. Parshall (Editor)

"Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia" helps readers explore a church that has gone from being an object of ridicule and sometimes violent persecution to a worldwide religion, counting prominent businesspeople and political leaders among its members (including former Massachusetts governor and recent presidential candidate Mitt Romney).

The encyclopedia begins with an overview of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--six essays cover the church's history from Joseph Smith's first vision in 1820 to its current global status. This provides a context for subsequent sections of alphabetically organized entries on key events and key figures in Mormon history. A final section looks at important issues such as the church's organization and government, its teachings on family, Mormonism and blacks, Mormonism and women, and Mormonism and Native Americans. Together, these essays and entries, along with revealing primary sources, portray the Mormon experience like no other available reference work.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

480 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

W. Paul Reeve is Chair of the History Department and Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah where he teaches courses on Utah history, Mormon history, and the history of the U.S. West. His book, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness, (Oxford, 2015) received the Mormon History Association’s Best Book Award, the John Whitmer Historical Association’s Smith-Pettit Best Book Award, and the Utah State Historical Society’s Francis Armstrong Madsen Best History Book Award. In 2023, Deseret Book published his Let's Talk about Race and Priesthood, with a foreword by Darius Gray. He is the recipient of the Utah Council for the Social Studies’ University Teacher of the Year award. He is Project Manager and General Editor of a digital database, Century of Black Mormons, designed to identify all known Black Latter-day Saints baptized between 1830 and 1930. The database is live at http://centuryofblackmormons.org