Peer-Reviewed articles • Understanding Mormonism 55

biographies have been published on Joseph Smith. Two of these have had the greatest impact: Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History and Richard Bushman’s Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.21 Both books take as their titles quotations attributed to Smith. Brodie’s approach to Smith was a landmark in Mormon studies. She psychoanalyzed the farm boy prophet and attempted to write about his life in an academic way, whereas older biographies came closer to polemics. According to the Studies in Mormon History database, No Man is the second-highest cited work of secondary criticism. Contemporary scholars have found multiple flaws in Brodie’s methodology and conclusions, so her work has fallen out of fashion considerably, but its impact on the field cannot be overstated. The premier Smith biography for scholars today is Rough Stone Rolling. Of the top ten most-cited works in SMH, Bushman’s critically acclaimed biography, published less than fifteen years ago, is already number five. All other works in the top ten were published before 1995 and most before 1970. It is not outside of the realm of possibility that Rough Stone Rolling will one day be the most-cited work of criticism in Mormon studies.

As a counterpoint to the Smith biographies, Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery’s Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith devotes itself to telling the story of Emma Smith, the first wife of Joseph Smith.22 Emma was married to Joseph until his death, despite her opposition to her husband’s polygamy. She would later sponsor their son, Joseph Smith III, as Smith’s successor, leaving the LDS Church and laying the foundation for what would become the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The book spends most of its pages on the one major issue upon which Joseph and Emma disagreed: polygamy. Indeed, relatively little space is devoted to the thirty-five years Emma lived after Joseph was murdered. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Newell and Avery’s otherwise excellent contribution to the field is the 15 th most-cited book in SMH.

As with Smith, Brigham Young has been the subject of a number of biographies. The most recent is Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet by John Turner.23 Turner’s work, while at times a bit tongue-in-cheek about Young’s quirks, perhaps even sensational in parts, is a highly regarded biography of the religious leader with the most recent scholarship behind it. Young’s most-cited biography, however, and indeed the 9 th most-cited work in SMH, is Brigham Young: American Moses by Leonard Arrington.24 Although over thirty years old, American Moses is still the standard Young biography in the field, in spite of its age and dated sources.

Polygamy, what Mormons officially refer to as plural marriage, is a major topic in 19 th century Mormon studies. Practiced publically for close to forty years and privately for twenty years before that, the institution, famously called one of the “twin relics of barbarism” (alongside slavery), influenced every aspect of Mormon life in the second half of the century. While today the LDS Church consistently distances itself from the practice, which has been forbidden in the Church since 1890, the general public still commonly associates polygamy with Mormons. Historians and scholars focus on plural marriage because of its social and cultural impact on the membership of the church prior to, and immediately after, the conclusion of the practice. Of the 28,000 items in SMH, over 1,000 have the subject tag plural marriage. Not surprisingly the highest-cited monograph with plural marriage as its heading is Arrington’s Great Basin Kingdom.25 This title concentrates on the economic history of the church during its first century. It is widely considered to be the first serious academic treatment of Mormonism, ushering in what would later be known as the New Mormon History, or a history dedicated to presenting the story of the Latter-day Saints to scholars to further the academic understanding of the faith

21 Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, The Mormon Prophet (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1945); Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).

22 Linda King Newell and Valerie Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, Prophet’s Wife, “Elect Lady,” Po-lygamy’s Foe, 1804-1879 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1984).

23 John G. Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Cambridge; London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012).

24 Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Knopf, 1985).

25 Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-Day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge: Har-vard University Press, 1958).