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 ...

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.

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 ...

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