Last year Terryl Givens published a handy introduction to The Book of Mormon as part of the Very Short Introduction series from Oxford University Press. (There are now more than 200 titles in print, ranging from African history to Kant to particle physics to the World Trade Organization; they are wonderful resources.) Most of these brief volumes synthesize hundreds of studies that have been produced over many decades; they offer a quick synopsis of scholarly consensus.
Givens was at something of a disadvantage, however, since apart from the scholarship on the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and its reception (which he had already masterfully reviewed in his By the Hand of Mormon), he was often breaking new ground in his The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction. This was particularly the case in his chapter identifying major themes in the Nephite record. Latter-day Saints have just begun reading their scriptures comprehensively, and thematic analysis is not as easy as one might assume.
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