Historian Benjamin Park, an assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University, has written a compelling and accessible history of Mormonism in the 1840s. Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier releases tomorrow from W. W. Norton’s Liveright imprint, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to better understand Joseph Smith, polygamy, politics, and how profoundly this chapter of Mormon history affected everything that came after.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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