New Mormon Books

In the first paragraph of Mormonism in Transition, Alexander recalls two problems that he confronted when he began work on the book. One was the torrent of sources - magazines, diaries, minutes, letters, and the like the period 1890 to 1930 presented him with. The second problem was less practical, and therefore, for our purposes, more interesting. Alexander notes that “there was no narrative base from which to began.” …overall, [he] concludes that the sheer “scope” of the period lacked conceptual clarity until he found some threads with which to pull it tight. And those threads are rationalization, organization, clarification, explication. This was the period, according to Alexander, in which the Church was standardized.

Revisiting: Mormonism in Transition: a history of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930
By: matt b.
Juvenile Instructor, June 18, 2009
http://www.juvenileinstructor.org/revisiting-mormonism-in-transition-a-history-of-the-latter-day-saints-1890-1930/

In the 19th century, for many in the East Coast of the United States, Brigham Young may have been the image they saw when they thought of Mormonism, but the ideas they heard coming from the new religion came mostly from the Apostle Orson Pratt. That’s a conclusion reached by Top of Utah author Breck England, in his still-important biography of Pratt, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt.

Political Surf on the life of Mormonism’s first intellectual
by Doug Gibson.
The Political Surf, Ogden Standard Examiner Blogs, Jun 19th, 2009.
http://blogs.standard.net/2009/06/19/political-surf-on-the-life-of-mormonisms-first-intellectual/