When we recount events, tell stories, write our memoirs, or create biographies of others' lives, we believe we are accurately replicating events as they occurred. In fact, we are not. And so does everyone else.
Imagination is part of it too.
In fact, the computer is not an adequate metaphor for the far more complex human mind. The problem is compounded when others attempt, while peering through the spectacles of their own human perspectives, to recreate histories and write biographies from data based in others' skewed perceptions and perspectives. With his fine sense of how far to go and what lines not to cross, Robert Kirby makes us laugh at ourselves, without threatening our spiritual equilibrium. Bitton, a major LDS historian, has compiled in five chapters the letters and diaries and poetry written by the Saints immediately after hearing the shocking news from Carthage. In the epilogue, Bitton steps from his historian's objective perspective to talk about Brother Joseph's meaning to him and generations of Latter-day Saints.