Ben’s great book notice on the forthcoming book on Joseph Smith got me thinking about what other books of interest are nearing publication or have been recently published dealing with Mormon History ( and a few dealing generally with Utah history).  If I miss any, please let me know and I’ll add it. If you know of any other rumored works, don’t hesitate to share.

Arthur H. Clark

Arthur H. Clark has recently published the following:

–At Sword’s Point, Part 1. William P. MacKinnon. This is volume 10 of the Kingdom in the West Series

–Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.  Edited by David Bigler and Will Bagley. This is volume 12 of the Kingdom in the West Series.  Volume 11 will be the second part of At Sword’s Point.

–Leonard J. Arrington: A Historian’s Life. Gary Topping. I’m excited to get a hold of this book and see what it presents.

Robert Clark informs us that Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector: A Scottish Immigrant in the American West, 1848-1861 by Polly Aird is due out June 2009. It will be a biography of Peter McAuslan, a Scottish convert and immigrant who ultimately left the Church and Utah.

BYU Religious Studies Center

The Religious Studies Center at BYU recently published:

-An Uncommon Pioneer: The Journals of James Henry Martineau, 1828-1918. Edited by Donald G. Godfrey and Rebecca S. Martineau-McCarty.  See a review here.

-Also recent from the RSC is The Doctrine and Covenants: Revelations in Context, edited by Andrew Hedges.

-An interesting book forthcoming from the RSC is A Land of Promise and Prophecy: Elder A. Theodore Tuttle in South America, 1960?1965. By Mark Grover.  (Chris just informed me that it’s finished, and due to be released in the next two weeks.)

Oxford University Press

-Oxford University Press, as Ben noted, has Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries, edited by Reid Neilson and Terryl Givens.

-Oxford, of course, recently published Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Walker, Turley, and Leonard.

Yale University Press

-Yale University Press will be publishing Matt Grow’s dissertation as “Liberty to the Downtrodden”: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer. Set for a February 2009 release. Though not exclusively a “Mormon” book, Kane famously had a long-standing relationship with the Mormons that Grow treats in this book.

University of Utah Press

-The University of Utah has Joseph Bates Noble: Polygamy and the Temple Lot Case by David L. Clark forthcoming January 2009.

-We have also heard from U of U Press that Amasa Mason Lyman, Mormon Apostle and Apostate: A Study in Dedication by Edward Leo Lyman is slated for some time in 2009.

Mellen Press

-Janet Bennion, author of Women of Principle and Desert Patriarchy has Evaluating the Effects of Polygamy on Women and Children in Four North American Mormon Fundamentalist Groups: An Anthropological Study forthcoming in December through Mellen Press.

Signature Books

Signature Books has had its forthcoming page down for a bit.  I understand that next year’s lineup will be settled on in the next few weeks.  I will update this line when that information becomes available. In the mean time, George Smith’s Nauvoo Polygamy: “But We Called It Celestial Marriage” is still due out in December.

Utah State University Press

-Recently published through Utah State University Press are, Mormonism’s Last Colonizer: The Life and Times of William H. Smart by William B. Smart

-And Place the Headstones Where They Belong: Thomas Neibaur, WWI Soldier by Sherman Fleek.

-Something relatively recently released by USU (press release here) that looks interesting was Folksongs From the Beehive State: Early Field Recordings of Utah and Mormon Music (Audiobook).

Forthcoming from USU Press are the following:

-Robert S. McPherson, Comb Ridge: The Ethnohistory of a Rock (April), “a new full-color prehistory and history of southeastern Utah that is centered on the most distinctive feature of the region’s landscape.”

-James Aton, The River Knows Everything: Desolation Canyon and the Green (April), “also a full-color history (with photographs by Dan Miller) of one of Utah’s more scenic areas. Aton, of SUU, focuses especially on the settlement and ranching frontier in this remotest of remote canyons, which splits the Tavaputs Plateau in eastern Utah.”

-LuAnn Faylor Snyder and Phillip A. Snyder, eds., Plural Marriage after the Manifesto: The Correspondence of Helen, Owen, and Avery Woodruff, 1899 to 1904, Life Writings of Frontier Women vol. 11 (April), “provides an unusual look at the internal dynamics and outward secrecy of the marriages of young apostle Abraham Owen Woodruff in the wake of his father’s manifesto.”

-Brian Cannon and Jessie Embry, eds., Utah in the Twentieth Century (May), “a collection of essays on twentieth century history by a diverse set of historians, from Susan Sessions Rugh to Douglas Alder, from Jacob Olmstead to David Lewis, from John Sillito and John McCormick to James Allen, from Jedediah Rogers to Kristen Rogers-Iverson.”

-Ronald G. Watt, The Mormon Passage of George D. Watt (July). “The title is tentative here…[Watt was] an early intellectual who was the first English convert to Mormonism, the creator of the Deseret Alphabet, editor of the Journal of Discourses, clerk to the First Presidency, antagonist to Willard Richards and ultimately Brigham Young, apostate, spiritualist, and so on.”

There are others that are possibilities for USU next year which the publisher will reveal in a few months. We’ll keep you posted.

FARMS

-FARMS has or is about to publish volume 5 of Royal Skousen’s Analysis of Textual variants of the Book of Mormon.

BYU Studies

-As discussed previously, BYU Studies will produce a special volume of their journal devoted to the Mountain Meadows Massacre including documents and articles.

-BYUS will also publish a larger book of MMM documents at some point afterward.

-Also from BYU Studies, hot off the press is Art and Spirituality: The Visual Culture of Christian Faith, edited by Herman du Toit and Doris R. Dant. From the publisher: “This book is a compilation of papers delivered at the 2006 Art, Belief, Meaning Symposium at the Museum of Art at BYU. Art and Spirituality is in the process of being distributed to bookstores and should appear on our web site (http://byustudies.byu.edu under products and books) in a week or so.”

-Also from BYU Studies,  The Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family: A Family Process Analysis of a Nineteenth-Century Household by Kyle R. Walker.  According to the publisher, the book will be in bookstores in about a month or less. “[Walker] uses five family process concepts–cohesion, resiliency, religiosity, conflict management, and family work and recreation–to examine historical sources that identify how the Smith family operated.”

-Also from BYUS, due March 2009, is Discoveries: Two Centuries of Poems by Mormon Women compiled and edited by Susan Elizabeth Howe and Sheree Maxwell Bench.  “Discoveries highlights poems that trace Mormon women’s life experiences from creation through childbirth, youth, marriage, motherhood, aging, death, and entrance into eternity. This second edition, printed in full color, includes two additional poems (on infertility and motherhood) and updated biographical sketches of the poets.”

Finally, BYU Studies is publishing this year the thesis of JI guest blogger Janiece Johnson, “Give Up All and Follow Your Lord”: Testimony and Exhortation in Early Mormon Women’s Letters, 1831-1839.

Cedar Fort

-Cedar Fort has reprinted E. Dale Lebaron’s Benjamin F. Johnson: Friend to the Prophets, hitherto somewhat pricey for an out of print hardcover edition (trust me, my wallet knows).

Simon and Schuster

-Simon and Schuster recently published Devil’s Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy by David Roberts.

-They also have American Exodus: Epic Story of the First Mormons by Randy Roberts due out in March 2009.

Routledge

Routledge is publishing a dissertation by Megan Sanborg Jones, Performing American Identity in Anti-Mormon Melodrama, release date set for April 2009.

Unknown

There have been recent reprints of some classic biographies:

-George Q. Cannon’s The Life of Joseph Smith, the Prophet

–The Life of Brigham Young; or, Utah and Her Founders by Edward W. Tullidge,

–The Life of John Taylor by B. H. Roberts

–Wilford Woodruff: History of His Life and Labors as Recorded in His Daily Journals by Matthias F. Cowley

-As well as the Times and Seasons set.

University of Illinois Press

-The University of Illinois Press continues to be a friend of Mormon Studies and recently published softbound editions of Kathryn Daynes’ More Wives Than One and Jeffrey Nichols’ Prostitution, Polygamy, and Power. A softbound edition of Ian Kimball’s Sports in Zion is expected in 2009.

The University of Oklahoma Press

UOP will publish a softcover edition of Richard Bennett’s We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus, 1846-1848, due March 2009.

Scarecrow Press

Will publish the third edition of The Historical Dictionary of Mormonism by Davis Bitton and Tom Alexander.

Greg Kofford Books

Kofford has a number of books forthcoming.

-Recently released is the second edition, revised and enlarged of Mormon Polygamous Families: Life in the Principle by Jessie Embry.

Also expected soon are the following:

–Hearken O Ye People: The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith’s Ohio Revelations by Mark L. Staker (December 2008)

-The second edition of Mormon Thunder: A Documentary History of Jedediah Morgan Grant by Gene Sessons

-A reprint of Andrew Jenson’s LDS Biographical Encyclopedia

–The History of the Mormons in Argentina by Nestor Curbelo, translated into English.

-Finally, The Development of Mormon Theology by Charles Harrell (March 2009).

Deseret Book

-Deseret Book recently published Steven Harper’s Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants: A Guided Tour Through Modern Revelations.  Designed for a general audience, I’ve heard it’s a helpful book.

-DB has also produced recently a leatherette set of The History of the Church.  I inspected these books not too long ago. They look nice enough, but I’m a little leery of the quality of the bindings.

Publisher Forthcoming

-I have word that Brittany Chapman is editing the life writings of Ruth May Fox, though I don’t believe a publisher has been settled on yet.

John Whitmer Books

We have word from John Hamer of John Whitmer Books that they have a number of great reads coming up.

-First, JWB has republished the first 6 volumes of the JWHA Journal with volumes 1-3 in one book and 4-6 in another. This will be welcomed news to those, like me, who have wanted to complete a run of the JWHA Journal.  John has informed us that the entire run will be available at a steep discount starting early next year, his contact info is here for further information.

Just available this week from JWB are:

–House of the Lord: The Story of Kirtland Temple by Barbara Walden and Lachlan MacKay and,

–Emma’s Family edited by Ron Romig, a companion volume to Emma’s Nauvoo also edited by Romig.

Forthcoming in the next year from JWB are:

-Lost Apostles: Forgotten Members of the Original Mormon Twelve by William Shepard and H. Michael Marquardt.  Which will have biographies of Thomas B. Marsh, William E. McLellin, Luke S. Johnson, William Smith, John F. Boynton, and Lyman E. Johnson, and provide historical context for their separation with the main body of Mormonism.

-Also The Strangites: Histories of the Great Lakes Mormons, a compilation of articles on the Strangite movement, edited by John Hamer and Vickie Speek.

-Also, An Illustrated History of Nauvoo by Steven L. Shields.  “This will be similar to the Kirtland Temple book, i.e., primarily for tourists, with new color maps and photos, but also good history.”

-Finally, another hopeful for next year from JWB is Hanging by a Thread: Joseph Smith and the White Horse Prophecy by Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster.

The Church Historian’s Press

Last, but not least, the first volume in the Diaries series of the Joseph Smith Papers is due at the end of the month.  Volume 1 of the Revelations series and volume 1 of the Histories series are due next year. Three cheers!!

Rumor Alert (Accuracy not guaranteed)

I have heard it rumored that Leo Lyman is working on an edition of the Abraham Cannon Diaries. I’ve also heard that editions of the diaries of Brigham Young, David O. McKay, James E. Talmage, and Ernest Wilkinson are also in the works, but I don’t know anything about time tables or if they are really being worked on.

“Someday”

Though not quite “forthcoming”, I have been working on and off for the last few years on an edition of the diaries of Anthony W. Ivins.  With everything else I have going on, I hope to get it done someday.

The future of publications in Mormon history is certainly bright. Happy reading!