Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi

Nearly forty years have passed since this book was first published, and it is still the best synthesis of this complex subject. Robert Bruce Flanders' 1965 classic study of Nauvoo, incomplete as it is because of its intentional disregard of social and religious issues, opened an avenue of discussion that most others have been unwilling to follow since that time. Flanders said that he wrote of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, not as a religious leader but as a "man of affairs--planner, promoter, architect, entrepreneur, executive, politician, filibusterer--matters of which he was sometimes less sure than he was those of the spirit." He also wrote of Mormon Nauvoo as a western boom town and not as a religious "city on a hill." There is little of the reverence in Flanders' study that most other Mormon scholars have displayed in handling the subject; the sacred history approach has created a romanticized and superficial image of Nauvoo and the events that took place there.As interpreted by Flanders, Nauvoo is largely a story of tragedy, both personally for Joseph Smith and collectively for the Mormons. For Flanders, the lofty visions that had led to the founding of the Latter Day Saint church descended into a secular quagmire of economics and politics because of internal flaws and external pressures on the banks of the Mississippi. Ultimately, the city failed and the church fractured.

Very balanced book on the Mormons in Nauvoo. Gives a more complete view of the persecution, and reasons thereof, that members of the LDS faith went through in Nauvoo. From their political involvement to land speculation to polygamy to everything in between. Covers everything without an overly rosy or cynical view. The best book on the period that I've read, whether written by a member of the LDS church or not.