Wife No. 19 is the compelling, informative and emotionally fraught biography of Ann Eliza Young, a member and wife within the Mormon church during the 19th century. Young sets out to chronicle a lengthy expos of the various misdeeds she witnessed or was personally part of. She describes the character of the founder and prophet of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, in the context of his interpersonal relationships. The gradual emergence of polygamy, and its uptake among the higher ranking members of the church, is detailed. Although the title highlights the polygamous relationships for which Mormonism gained notoriety, this book does not shy away from the other scandals or controversies. For example; the means via which Brigham Young dishonestly relieved his followers of their money, possessions and cattle via a number of schemes, and the frequent use of the local Native American populations as scapegoats.

Celestial Marriage - the ""doctrine of the plurality of wives"" - polygamy. No issue in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (popularly known as the Mormon Church) has attracted more attention. From its contentious and secretive beginnings in the 1830s to its public proclamation in 1852, and through almost four decades of bitter conflict with the federal government to Church renunciation of the practice in 1890, this belief helped define a new religious identity and unify the Mormon people, just as it scandalized their neighbors and handed their enemies the most effective weapon they wielded in their battle against Mormon theocracy. Doing the Works of Abraham provides the basic documents supporting and challenging Mormon polygamy, supported by the concise commentary and documentation of editor B. Carmon Hardy. Plural marriage is everywhere at hand in Mormon history. However, despite its omnipresence, including a broad and continuing stream of publications devoted to it, few attempts have been made to assemble a documentary history of the topic. Hardy has drawn on years of research and writing on the controversial and complex subject to make this narrative collection of documents illuminating and myth-shattering. The second ""relic of barbarism,"" as the Republican Party platform of 1856 characterized polygamy, was believed by the Saints to be God's law, trumping the laws of a mere republic. The long struggle for what was, and for some fundamentalists remains, religious freedom still resonates in American religious law. Throughout the West, thousands of families continue the practice, even In the face of LDS Church opposition.

Michael W. Homer has collected the writings of diverse European travelers through Mormon settlements in the American West. Providing a counternarrative to typical accounts of encounters with Mormons in such sojourns, these collected tales include such colorful perspectives on the Mormons as those of an outraged Catholic priest, an intrigued German prince, a liberated French woman, an insightful Italian count, and an embittered Danish apostate. Some of the travelers met with Brigham Young, while others encountered more commonplace figures of the West, including fur traders, Indians, and soldiers.

C. S. Lewis, long renowned for his children's books as well as his Christian apologetics, has been the subject of wide interest since he first stepped-up to the BBC's microphone during the Second World War. Until now, however, the reasons why this medievalist began writing books for a popular audience, and why these books have continued to be so popular, had not been fully explored. In fact Lewis, who once described himself as by nature an 'extreme anarchist', was a critical controversialist in his time-and not to everyone's liking. Yet, somehow, Lewis's books directed at children and middlebrow Christians have continued to resonate in the decades since his death in 1963. Stephanie L. Derrick considers why this is the case, and why it is more true in America than in Lewis's home-country of Britain. The story of C. S. Lewis's fame is one that takes us from his childhood in Edwardian Belfast, to the height of international conflict during the 1940s, to the rapid expansion of the paperback market, and on to readers' experiences in the 1980s and 1990s, and, finally, to London in November 2013, where Lewis was honoured with a stone in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. Derrick shows that, in fact, the author himself was only one actor among many shaping a multi-faceted image. The Fame of C. S. Lewis is the most comprehensive account of Lewis's popularity to date, drawing on a wealth of fresh material and with much to interest scholars and C. S. Lewis admirers alike.