If you, like millions of Americans, turned in to watch Murder Among the Mormons, and are interested in reading more on the Hofmann saga, Early Mormonism’s “magic world view,” or scholarship examining Mormonism as the “Other,” check out this list.

I want to add to this list–please send me a note or comment here for me to update it with additional resources!

Histories of the Hofmann Saga

• Richard E. Turley, Victims (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992).
• Linda Sillitoe and Allen Roberts, Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2006).

These are the two best histories of the Hofmann saga. Turley, a longtime employee of the LDS Church History Department, wrote the first account and focuses most on the LDS Church’s perspective. Sillitoe and Roberts address what it was like for those involved who weren’t part of the LDS Church’s leadership.

Scholarship on Mormonism and the “Magic World View”

• D. Michael Quinn, Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1986). (The updated version still contains the disproved Salamander letter and responds to all, or nearly all, of Quinn’s critics.)
• Alan Taylor, “Rediscovering the Context of Joseph Smith’s Treasure Seeking,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 19 (1986): 18-28.
• John L. Brooke, The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
• Samuel M. Brown, “The Reluctant Metaphysicians,” Mormon Studies Review 1 (2014): 115-131.
• Ann Taves, “History and the Claims of Revelation: Joseph Smith and the Materialization of the Golden Plates,” Numen 61 (2014): 182-207.
• Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

If you’re going to read one thing, and want to read it fast, read Taylor (link is to a PDF). Quinn and Brooke both have drawbacks, including interpretation, but are nonetheless classics in Mormon history. Brown’s article is a literature review of books that cover Mormonism in the context of magic and religion. Taves’ article looks at the golden plates, as physical objects, which is perhaps the most religious studies-y reading provided here. Colleen McDannell’s introduction to Material Christianity provides readers with a sense of how and why objects are made sacred by religious traditions.

Steve Fleming’s book, forthcoming and based off of his dissertation, will make a significant contribution to the historiographical conversation!

Also of note: Ben Park organized a roundtable in the Journal of Mormon History on Brooke’s book and should be consulted by those looking for sustained intellectual engagement with the Bancroft winner.

The Mormon “Other”

J. Spencer Fluhman, “An ‘American Mahomet’: Joseph Smith, Muhammad, and the Problem of Prophets in Antebellum America,” Journal of Mormon History 34, no. 3 (Summer 2008): 23-45.

Christine Talbot, A Foreign Kingdom: Mormons and Polygamy in American Political Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013).

W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness(New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

This list may not seem necessary at first, but as I watched MatM, I realized that the documentary is BOTH true crime drama and framed as a “cult documentary” like Wild, Wild Country. That isn’t to say the film is anti-Mormon, it’s to say that it fits a genre accessible and familiar to modern audiences. With Mormonism still regularly being called a cult this isn’t a surprise, but still requires that viewers see how Mormonism is made “other.” Whether Latter-day Saints produce something or not, it can fall into familiar tropes.

Fluhman’s article, also a part of his first book, examines how Joseph Smith’s comparison to Muhammad shaped whether Mormonism was truly a “religion” in antebellum America. Talbot’s, based later, examines polygamy and Mormonism’s public image. Reeve’s book examines the racialization of Mormons in nineteenth-century America.