The Gathering of Zion
by Wallace Stegner | 
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian
by Wallace Stegner | 
No god but God
by Reza Aslan | 
1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West
by Roger Crowley | 
Caesar and Christ
by Will Durant | 
Servants of Allah
by Sylviane A. Diouf | 
The Wonder That Was India
by A. L. Basham | 
Inside Scientology
by Janet Reitman | 
When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone
by Gal Beckerman | 
The Stations of the Sun
by Ronald Hutton |
The First Crusade
by Thomas Asbridge | 
Belonging
by Simon Schama | 
Magic in the Middle Ages
by Richard Kieckhefer | 
The Night Battles
by Carlo Ginzburg | 
A Religious History of the American People
by S. E. Ahlstrom | 
In the Shadow of the Sword
by Tom Holland | 
Jews, God, and History
by Max I. Dimont | 
The Ornament of the World
by Maria Rosa Menocal | 
Defenders of the Faith
by James Reston Jr. | 
Popular Magic
by Owen Davies |
Where others saw only sage, a salt lake, and a great desert, the Mormons saw their "lovely Deseret," a land of lilacs, honeycombs, poplars, and fruit trees. Unwelcome in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, they migrated to the dry lands between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada to establish Mormon country, a wasteland made green. Like the land the Mormons settled, their habits stood in stark contrast to the frenzied recklessness of the American West. Opposed to the often prodigal individualism of the West, Mormons lived in closely knit - some say ironclad - communities. The story of Mormon country is one of self-sacrifice and labor spent in the search for an ideal in the most forbidding territory of the American West. Richard W. Etulain provides a new introduction to this edition.