John G. Turner’s new book is a nimble account that showcases the frenzied core of Smith’s soul.

Recently we’ve seen a rise in what some scholars are calling “polygamy denial,” with some Latter-day Saints now claiming Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy, or at least not sexual polygamy.

(RNS) — ‘I think the evidence for Joseph’s polygamous sealings is pretty overwhelming,’ says historian John Turner, who has penned a new biography of Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith 1805-1844 Born on December 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vermont, to Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph Smith Jr. grew up on a series of tenant farms in Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York.

In 2012, scholar John Turner published an award-winning biography of Brigham Young, a mountain of a man in Western Americana. But there remained a bigger fish to pursue, namely Joseph Smith, the ...

Perhaps a true-to-life biography of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, can never be written. Smith’s claims to accessing the divine were too outlandish, his embrace of polygamy too ...