Title: Kingdom of Nauvoo : the rise and fall of a religious empire on the American frontier /
Authors: Park, Benjamin E.
Year: 2020
Subjects: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints History.; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Mormon Church Illinois History.; Mormons Mississippi River Valley History.; HISTORY / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies); Mormon Church; Mormons; Nauvoo (Ill.) History.; Illinois; Illinois Nauvoo; Mississippi River Valley
Abstract: "In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park excavates the brief, tragic life of a lost Mormon city, demonstrating that the Mormons are essential to understanding American history writ large. Using newly accessible sources, Park recreates the Mormons' 1839 flight from Missouri to Illinois. There, under the charismatic leadership of Joseph Smith, they founded Nauvoo, which shimmered briefly-but Smith's challenge to democratic traditions, as well as his new doctrine of polygamy, would bring about its fall. His wife Emma, rarely written about, opposed him, but the greater threat came from without: in 1844, a mob murdered Joseph, precipitating the Mormon trek to Utah. Throughout this chronicle, Park shows that far from being outsiders, the Mormons were representative of their era in their distrust of democracy and their attempt to forge a sovereign society of their own"--
Contents: Soil -- Seeds -- Roots -- Trunk -- Branches -- Fruit -- Harvest -- Legacies.