{"product_id":"joseph-smith-isbn-9781400077533","title":"Joseph Smith","description":"Founder of the largest indigenous Christian church in American history, Joseph Smith published the 584-page Book of Mormon when he was twenty-three and went on to organize a church, found cities, and attract thousands of followers before his violent death at age thirty-eight. Richard Bushman, an esteemed cultural historian and a practicing Mormon, moves beyond the popular stereotype of Smith as a colorful fraud to explore his personality, his relationships with others, and how he received revelations\u003ci\u003e. \u003c\/i\u003e An arresting narrative of the birth of the Mormon Church, \u003ci\u003eJoseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling\u003c\/i\u003e also brilliantly evaluates the prophet’s bold contributions\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eto Christian theology and his cultural place in the modern world.“Remarkable. . . . A tale that’s as colorful, suspenseful and unlikely as any in American history...Bushman earns a place for his biography on the very short shelf reserved for books on Mormonism with appeal to initiates and outsiders, too.”—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e“A fascinating definitive biography. . . . Stirs deeper questions about American religious convictions and how they shape lives and culture.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Christian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e“An exhaustively researched and beautifully written biography of Mormonism’s enigmatic founder.”—\u003ci\u003eChristianity Today\u003c\/i\u003e\"Fascinating. . . .Bushman captures all the harrowing events of Smith's short life, rife with converts and cabals, while meticulously dissecting the revelations that continue to haunt the Smith story.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Providence Journal\u003c\/i\u003e“Well-researched and lucidly written. . . . An excellent source for learning about the Mormon faith.”  —\u003ci\u003eThe St. Louis Post-Dispatch\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eRichard L. Bushman\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1931. He took his B.A., M.A., and PhD. degrees at Harvard University. He has taught at Brigham Young University, Boston University, University of Delaware, and Columbia University, where he is currently Gouverneur Morris Professor of History, Emeritus. His previous books are \u003ci\u003eFrom Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765\u003c\/i\u003e (1967), \u003ci\u003eJoseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism\u003c\/i\u003e (1984), \u003ci\u003eKing and People in Provincial Massachusetts \u003c\/i\u003e(1985), \u003ci\u003ea\u003c\/i\u003end T\u003ci\u003ehe Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, and Cities\u003c\/i\u003e (1992).THE JOSEPH SMITH FAMILY\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto 1816\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    My Last request \u0026amp; charge is, that you will Live together in an   undivided bond of Love; you are maney of you, and if you Join together   as one man, you need not want aney thing; what counsil, what comfort, what money, what friends may you not help your Selves unto, if you   will, all as one contribute your aids.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    asael smith, “A few words of advice” (1799)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Lucy Mack Smith bade farewell to her sons Joseph and Hyrum a few days   after their deaths in June 1844. Joseph’s secretary, Willard Richards,   and their brother Samuel had brought the bodies back from Carthage to   Nauvoo, and after the corpses were washed and dressed in burial   clothes, the Smith family was admitted to the room. “I had for a long   time braced every nerve,” their mother wrote,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    roused every energy of my soul, and called upon God to strengthen me;   but when I entered the room, and saw my murdered sons extended both at   once before my eyes, and heard the sobs and groans of my family, and   the cries of “Father! Husband! Brothers!” from the lips of their wives,   children, brother, and sisters, it was too much, I sank back, crying to   the Lord, in the agony of my soul, “My God, my God, why hast thou   forsaken this family!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Six months later, Lucy began a narrative of the early life of Joseph   Smith. She was sixty-nine, afflicted with disease and saddened by “the   cruelty of an ungodly and hard hearted world.” Within a month she had   lost three sons: Joseph and Hyrum to vigilante bullets and Samuel to a   fever contracted while escaping the mob. Of her seven sons, only the   unstable William survived. Her husband, Joseph Sr., had died four years   earlier, and she lived with her daughter, another Lucy, and later with   Joseph’s widow, Emma, who was carrying her husband’s unborn son.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In this troubled and uncertain moment, the question of the Prophet’s   successor remained unsettled. Lucy’s son William was soon to be among   the contenders. The “Gentile” countryside expected the Mormon kingdom   to crumble and the Saints to disperse. When they proved inconveniently   adamant, the citizens forced the Mormons to leave. But trouble did not   slow Lucy’s dictation to Martha and Howard Coray through the winter of   1844–45. One crisply told story after another covered the pages, making   her narrative the central source for the early life of Joseph Smith.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Lucy Smith reacted to the sorrows and distresses of her life with   indignation, not regret. Recollecting the murder of her sons, she wrote   that “my blood curdles in my veins.” At the close of the book, she   consigned the malicious and indifferent government officials who had   darkened her family’s lives—the governors Lilburn W. Boggs, Thomas   Carlin, and Thomas Ford, and President Martin Van Buren—to the judgment   of God. She was a proud, high-strung woman, belligerent, capable of   anger, grief, and sublime confidence in the final triumph of the   innocent. She concluded her account with a lofty judgment: “And I shall   leave the world to judge, as seemeth them good, concerning what I have   written. But this much I will say, that the testimony which I have   given is true, and will stand for ever.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Lucy did not mention the name of Joseph Smith, Jr., until page 56 of   her record. As she told the story, no signs or portents accompanied the   birth of her most famous son. She said quite simply that “in the   meantime we had a son, whom we called Joseph, after the name of his   father; he was born December 23, 1805. I shall speak of him more   particularly by and by.” Joseph’s revelations and writings, his part in   constructing the city of Nauvoo, the tens of thousands of followers,   and his national notoriety—none of this overwhelmed Lucy Smith’s story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Smith family stood at the center. Lucy’s pride was the pride of   family. When she saw the bodies of Hyrum and Joseph, she spontaneously   asked why had God “forsaken this family.” Her narrative began with her   father, Solomon, and devoted six chapters to her brothers and sisters   before telling about herself. Lucy calculated that six Smith martyrs   had fallen because of persecution: Joseph Sr.; sons Don Carlos, Hyrum,   and Samuel; William’s wife Caroline; and Joseph the Prophet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She had little worldly to boast of. Lucy knew of the “attention and   respect which are ever shown to those who live in fine circumstances,”   but of her sister Lydia, who “sought riches and obtained them,” Lucy   wrote but two paragraphs: not that Lydia was less loved, “but she   seemed to float more with the stream of common events.”7 Lucy’s pride   arose from the way her family met adversity. Joseph and Hyrum lay in   triumph in their coffins because justice and charity gave them power   over their enemies. She honored those who overcame. Her narrative   turned the misfortunes of the Smith family into exemplifications of   family character.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    solomon and lucy mack\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Lucy Mack Smith was the youngest of eight children born to Solomon Mack   and Lydia Gates. Lucy briefly mentioned her father’s adventures in the   French and Indian War and the American Revolution, and then said little   more about him. He was absent for years at a time while Lucy was   growing up, and until he experienced a drastic change of heart late in   life, he was preoccupied solely with the pursuit of wealth. Solomon was   born September 15, 1732, in Lyme, Connecticut, the grandson of John   Mack, one of Lyme’s prospering traders. When Solomon was four, his   father, Ebenezer Mack, lost the land he had inherited in Lyme, and   Solomon was bound out to a hard-hearted and miserly farmer, about whom   he wrote in his memoir:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I was treated by my Master as his property and not as his fellow   mortal; he taught me to work, and was very careful that I should have   little or no rest. . . . His whole attention was taken up on the   pursuits of the good things of this world; wealth was his supreme   object. I am afraid gold was his God.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Solomon grew up “like the wild ass’s colt,” feeling “no obligation with   regard to society.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Free at age twenty-one, Solomon Mack tried “to make myself great and   happy, in the way I was educated,” by accumulating property. Defeated   in one venture after another, wounded by falling trees and spills from   horses, afflicted with fits and permanently lame, shipwrecked, betrayed   by business associates, he always recovered his health and courage and   set forth on new undertakings. He enlisted for service in the French   and Indian War and with his discharge pay purchased a farm in Lyme. In   1759, at twenty-six, he married Lydia Gates, daughter of Deacon Daniel   Gates in nearby East Haddam. But then, carried away by ambition, he   purchased rights to 1,600 acres in New York, freighted a vessel for New   York City, and sold his Lyme property to purchase a proprietary right   in New Hampshire. By July 8, 1775, when Lucy Mack was born in Gilsum,   New Hampshire, Solomon had eight children, had cleared scores of acres   and owned hundreds more, risked his capital in a variety of ventures,   and yet despite all his efforts, “the Lord would not suffer me to   prosper.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The battle of Bunker Hill took place in Boston three weeks before   Lucy’s birth. George Washington’s greatest need was for supplies.   Sensing a renewal of the opportunities of the French and Indian War,   Solomon learned from his brother-in-law in Connecticut how to make   saltpeter for gunpowder and earned a dollar a day teaching the art from   town to town. During the Revolution, Solomon was one of seven Gilsum   men to enlist in the army. He alternated between enlistments and   profit-making enterprises like carting the army’s baggage. In 1778, he   signed on with the crew of a privateer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    For fourteen years, Solomon lived at home less than half the time.   Instead of satisfying himself with a small farmstead, the traditional   base for a household economy, he reached for one handhold after another   in the larger economy. After the war he freighted a vessel bound for   Liverpool, Nova Scotia, sailed with a fishing schooner, and ended up   purchasing it after it was damaged in a hurricane and abandoned. He and   a son carried passengers to New London, Connecticut, and conducted a   coasting trade between Halifax, Nova Scotia, and St. John, New   Brunswick. For four years Solomon heard nothing from his family.   Finally around 1788, he returned home with little to show for his   exertions. He was fifty-six, and after all his “hard labor and   perplexity of mind, I had won nothing.” “The best of my days were past   and gone and had to begin entirely anew.” He discovered on his return   that Lydia and the children had been turned out of their house in   Montague, Massachusetts. A misunderstanding on an old debt from Lyme   and the underhanded dealings of one John McCurdy, who fell heir to   Solomon’s promissory note, led to the ejection. This news took the   heart out of him. “I now thought all was gone, and I did not care   whether I lived or died.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Solomon’s doleful account of his life should not be read as a narrative   of failure. He wrote his story after his religious conversion in 1811   to show that God had repeatedly humbled him and taught him the vanity   of the world, and yet he had remained deaf to the Lord’s call.   Solomon’s purpose required him to emphasize defeat and despair.   Although they suffered reverses, the Mack family did not dwell in mean   poverty. At various times, they owned farms and houses. Solomon had the   capital to purchase land, freight vessels, buy a schooner, and to owe   and be owed hundreds of dollars. In 1786, his daughter Lydia married   Samuel Bill from one of Gilsum’s prominent families. Solomon’s   disappointments never broke his spirit. After lamenting that he cared   not whether he lived or died, he reported that “I went to work and   shifted from plan to plan till at length I moved to Tunbridge.” Neither   failure, old age, nor broken bones defeated him. The significance of   Solomon’s account lies less in his actual success or failure in   acquiring wealth than in his sense of life as made up of toil, hurt,   defeat, and death. Outside of the war episodes, there is no happiness   or triumph until the end, when “God did appear for me and took me out   of the horrible pit and mirey clay, and set my feet on the rock of   Christ Jesus.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Much of Solomon’s grim endurance passed to his daughter. Lucy measured   the early years not by happy friendships or childish adventures but by   deaths and illnesses. Her memories, she said, were “engraved upon my   heart with a pen of Iron.” When a chance meeting reminded her of her   youth, the thought would come to her, “ ‘The friends of my youth! where   are they?’ The tomb replies, ‘here are they!’ ” Lucy’s life could be   recounted as a series of losses. When she was three, Solomon was   carried home half-dead from a falling tree. Later she watched while he   suffered from a waterwheel fall and then from bodily fits caused by a   blow on the head from a tree limb. Solomon left for Nova Scotia when   Lucy was about eight. Soon after, her mother suffered a “severe fit of   sickness” and came so near death that, in the absence of Solomon, she   assigned eight-year-old Lucy to her brother Stephen for safekeeping.   When Lucy was about fourteen, her married sister Lovisa fell ill with   consumption, and for five years, either Lovisa or Lovina, a year   younger and stricken with the same disease, hovered on the edge of   death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    At age sixteen or seventeen Lucy was able to carry Lovina, then   twenty-nine, from chair to bed. As Lovina died, she told Lucy of the   cold creeping into her fingers and face. A few months later, in 1794,   Lovisa’s consumption flared up after a three-year remission. Solomon   went at once to South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she lived with her   husband, and tried to bring her back to Gilsum, but she died in an inn   on the way home. Lucy’s “mournful recital” evoked feelings that “must   last while life endures.” In summing up her early life, Lucy spoke only   of these illnesses and deaths.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Probably in 1794, when Lucy was nineteen, grief began to prey upon her.   “I was pensive and melancholy, and often in my reflections I thought   that life was not worth possessing.” Depressed and restless, Lucy   sought comfort in religion: “I determined to obtain that which I had   heard spoken of so much from the pulpit—a change of heart.” She gave   herself to Bible reading and prayer but stumbled over one obstacle. “If   I remain a member of no church, all religious people will say I am of   the world; and if I join some one of the different denominations, all   the rest will say I am in error. No church will admit that I am right,   except the one with which I am associated.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Her father had no answers. At sixty-two, he still sought happiness in   an elusive prosperity, the false hope of his faithless upbringing.   Lucy’s mother, Lydia, reared in a deacon’s house, joined the   Congregational church at age thirty after she married Solomon. He gave   her full credit for instructing the children in habits of “piety,   gentleness, and reflection,” and for calling them together morning and   evening to pray. Lucy said that all of her religious instruction came   from her “pious and affectionate” mother.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Mack children bore her imprint. As Lovina and Lovisa approached   death, they warned their hearers to prepare for eternity. The oldest   son, Jason, became a lay preacher at twenty, and by the end of his life   was practicing faith healings and “holding meetings, day and night,   from place to place.” He became a religious seeker before he was   sixteen, pursuing the spiritual gifts of early Christianity outside of   established churches. Religious currents ran deep in Lucy. She believed   that God had healed her sister, Lydia, and her mother, and she solemnly   recorded the account of Lovisa’s vision of “the Saviour, as through a   veil.” Her sisters’ deaths led her thoughts to eternity, judgment, and   the worthlessness of life. But the only mention of a church in Lucy’s   childhood reminiscences occurs in the reference to Lovisa after her   marriage to Joseph Tuttle. Lucy groped through her depression looking   for a church and a change of heart and found nothing. Mack religion was   family religion, and nothing outside the family satisfied her.A Cultural Biography of Joseph Smith","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304506314981,"sku":"NP9781400077533","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400077533.jpg?v=1767730471","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/joseph-smith-isbn-9781400077533","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}