History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Volume 2

This is history from inside the storm. Written by the founder of a faith that would reshape American religious life, this volume documents 1834: the year early Latter-day Saints faced escalating violence in Missouri, organized the expedition known as Zion's Camp, and watched their young church fracture under the weight of persecution and internal dissent. The prose is plain, direct, and often gripping in its simplicity. Smith records mob threats and prayer vigils, excommunications and revelations, the desperate hope of a people driven from town to town. What emerges is not theology but survival: the messy, human chronicle of a religious movement fighting to exist. For scholars of American religion, this is a primary source of considerable weight. For readers seeking to understand the raw origins of Mormonism, it offers something no secondary history can: the voice of the moment, unfiltered.