Peer-Reviewed articles • Understanding Mormonism 51

either out of popular culture curiosity or for academic investigation. This essay reviews major sources in this growing field for any who wish either to assist patrons in comparative religion projects related to Mormonism, develop a working collection in Mormon studies, or both. Due to space, I concentrate primarily on recent sources, even when historical classics exist in a genre or on a topic.

Before continuing, however, I wish briefly to address the complexities and assumptions behind using the term “Mormon.” After Joseph Smith was murdered by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, in 1844, the young religion faced a succession crisis. There were many individuals who believed they should lead the Church. This led to several different splinter groups, or what some refer to as “Restoration” schismatic groups from the Church, the largest of which is the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (now called the Community of Christ). While the field of Mormon studies includes all sects in the Restoration tradition, when the members of the general public think of “Mormons,” they are almost certainly equating this term with the adherents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is headquartered in Salt Lake City, however naively erroneous that equation may be. Even in the field of Mormon studies, many of the publications discussed in this article follow this general trend of equating the term “Mormon” with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, specifically.1 Accordingly, while some works discussed focus on schismatic groups, most of those in this essay focus on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Citation Index Data and the Studies in Mormon History Database

This bibliography draws heavily from the citation data found in the Studies in Mormon History Database (SMH), the most comprehensive index of scholarship in Mormonism available. SMH is based on the book Studies in Mormon History, 1830-1997.2 This work attempted to find and index all works of scholarship related to Mormon-ism from the founding of the Church to the end of the 20 th century. Shortly after publication, one of the authors, James Allen, worked with BYU personnel to move the content to a free online database and to keep the data-set updated with new publications. Since that time, it has been managed by my predecessor, Michael Hunter, and now I co-manage it with Trevor Alvord, Curator for Contemporary Mormonism at BYU. Between us, we have added nearly 6,000 books, 1,600 articles, 4,000 book chapters, and 700 theses and dissertations to the database in addition to the original sources in the print bibliography. In 2017, we began adding citation index information in which citations are linked to other citations whose sources cite them. In this way, we hoped to discover the most-cited works in Mormon studies.

General Works and Encyclopedias

As with any religious tradition, it is difficult to grasp a religion without first understanding its origins—its history, theology, rites, culture, and quirks. Richard Bushman’s Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction serves as a brief primer for anyone interested in an overview of the Church and its people.3 Jan Shipps’ Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition offers a nicely contextualized history of the faith, with particular emphasis on

1 While this essay was in the composition and publication process, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published a preferred style guide for referring to itself and its members in media outlets. The term “Mormon” is now discouraged. However, this new preference creates with it some confusion with regard to past publications (many of which are reviewed in the current study) in the scholarly field known as Mormon studies. The author has attempted to follow the guide where possible, using the full name of the Church or simply “the Church” and “mem-bers of the Church” to speak particularly about that branch of Mormonism. Where all schismatic groups in the religious tradition and/or their members are implied or explicitly stated (and not just the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its practicing members), the term “Mormon” or “Mormonism” is used as a broader, that is, generic, inclusive.

2 James B. Allen, Ronald W. Walker, and David J. Whittaker, Studies in Mormon History, 1830-1997: An Indexed Bibliogra-phy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000).

3 Richard L. Bushman, Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).