Here are 25 books that No Man Knows My History fans have personally recommended if you like
No Man Knows My History.
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In 2012, a publisher asked me if I wanted to write a book about Joseph Smith's assassination. I leapt at the chance, in part because I was fascinated by Smith and the Latter-day Saints, and in part because I appreciated how many of the important contributions to Mormon history --- including Fawn Brodie’s famous biography of Joseph Smith, or the first honest and comprehensive account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre -- sprang from the pens of women and men with no formal academic training. By contrast, many “scholars” have disgraced themselves with prevaricating or pusillanimous accounts of the religion’s raucous and fascinating 190-year history. So jump in! Never a dull moment with the Latter-day Saints!
This is an honest book about Joseph Smith’s first, and only “real” wife, Emma, who virulently opposed polygamy and, after Joseph’s death, convinced herself that it never existed. Emma is one of the three titans of Mormon history: she, her husband, and the subject of my next pick.
Mormon Enigma is the bestselling biography of Emma Hale Smith, wife of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. It was Joseph Smith who announced that an angel of the Lord had commanded him to introduce a 'new order of marriage.' And it was Emma Hale Smith who confronted the practice of polygamy head on.
As the authors note in their introduction, "Early leaders in Utah castigated Emma from their pulpits for opposing Brigham Young and the practice of polygamy, and for lending support to the Reorganization. As these attitudes filtered down through the years, Emma was virtually written out of official…
In 2012, a publisher asked me if I wanted to write a book about Joseph Smith's assassination. I leapt at the chance, in part because I was fascinated by Smith and the Latter-day Saints, and in part because I appreciated how many of the important contributions to Mormon history --- including Fawn Brodie’s famous biography of Joseph Smith, or the first honest and comprehensive account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre -- sprang from the pens of women and men with no formal academic training. By contrast, many “scholars” have disgraced themselves with prevaricating or pusillanimous accounts of the religion’s raucous and fascinating 190-year history. So jump in! Never a dull moment with the Latter-day Saints!
You hear a lot about John C. Fremont and Kit Carson, but square mile for square mile, Brigham Young is the man who built the American West. He dispatched Latter-day Saints to settle the following states, either wholly or in part: Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, and Oregon.
Brigham Young was a rough-hewn craftsman from New York whose impoverished and obscure life was electrified by the Mormon faith. He trudged around the United States and England to gain converts for Mormonism, spoke in spiritual tongues, married more than fifty women, and eventually transformed a barren desert into his vision of the Kingdom of God. While previous accounts of his life have been distorted by hagiography or polemical expose, John Turner provides a fully realized portrait of a colossal figure in American religion, politics, and westward expansion.
After the 1844 murder of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Young gathered those…
In 2012, a publisher asked me if I wanted to write a book about Joseph Smith's assassination. I leapt at the chance, in part because I was fascinated by Smith and the Latter-day Saints, and in part because I appreciated how many of the important contributions to Mormon history --- including Fawn Brodie’s famous biography of Joseph Smith, or the first honest and comprehensive account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre -- sprang from the pens of women and men with no formal academic training. By contrast, many “scholars” have disgraced themselves with prevaricating or pusillanimous accounts of the religion’s raucous and fascinating 190-year history. So jump in! Never a dull moment with the Latter-day Saints!
Not only is this book fascinating, but it is also utterly honest, and honesty is in short supply in Mormon history-telling. Oaks is a politically conservative and culturally controversial member of the Mormon church’s ruling triumvirate, which in no way detracts from this masterpiece.
Carthage Conspiracy deals with the general problem of Mormon/non-Mormon conflict, as well as with the dramatic story of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, his brother Hyrum, and their alleged assassins. It places the infamous event at the Carthage jail (1846) and the subsequent murder-conspiracy trial in the context of Mormon and American legal history, and deals with the question of achieving justice when crimes are politically motivated and popularly supported.
In 2012, a publisher asked me if I wanted to write a book about Joseph Smith's assassination. I leapt at the chance, in part because I was fascinated by Smith and the Latter-day Saints, and in part because I appreciated how many of the important contributions to Mormon history --- including Fawn Brodie’s famous biography of Joseph Smith, or the first honest and comprehensive account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre -- sprang from the pens of women and men with no formal academic training. By contrast, many “scholars” have disgraced themselves with prevaricating or pusillanimous accounts of the religion’s raucous and fascinating 190-year history. So jump in! Never a dull moment with the Latter-day Saints!
These heart-wrenching biographies of 33 of Joseph Smith’s wives were the first, in-depth exploration of the social and emotional costs of Mormon polygamy. Loneliness appeared in 1997. The church waited until November 2014, six months after the publication of American Crucifixion, to officially acknowledge that Joseph had up to 40 wives.
Beginning in the 1830s, at least thirty-three women married Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. These were passionate relationships which also had some longevity, except in cases such as that of two young sisters, one of whom was discovered by Joseph’s first wife, Emma, in a locked bedroom with the prophet. Emma remained a steadfast opponent of polygamy throughout her life.
The majority of Smith’s wives were younger than he, and one-third were between fourteen and twenty years of age. Another third were already married, and some of the husbands served as witnesses at their own wife’s polyandrous wedding. In…
People sometimes say that the purpose of anthropology is to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. I think the same about history. As these books demonstrate, apparently normal early Americans have complex and unique inner lives, while those who seem bizarre, remote, or august, in fact, have wholly relatable human experiences. I usually write about complicated systems, like insurance and law. But I cherish these books about outcasts, oddballs, and one-of-a-kinds. They remind me that our society comprises individuals whose life experiences, worldviews, and decisions are unique—and ultimately unpredictable. Whenever I write, I try to remember that.
This book is for anyone whose family had open secrets—shocking, taboo, untraditional stories that could be tolerated as long as they remained unspoken. Rachel Hope Cleves thinks sometimes we should just say the secret out loud.
Shrugging off a scholarly tradition of delicacy and caution about sexuality in history, she marches into Charity and Sylvia's tiny New England bedroom and says: yes, these two women loved each other, yes, they considered themselves husband and wife, and yes, they definitely had sex. How do we know? How did their small town tolerate this? How could they have been church leaders?
I had all these questions, and Cleves answered them. Charity and Sylvia's poignant, astonishing story makes me wonder: what else is right in front of my eyes that I'm not seeing?
Charity and Sylvia is the intimate history of two ordinary women who lived in an extraordinary same-sex marriage during the early nineteenth century. Based on diaries, letters, and poetry, among other original documents, the research traces the women's lives in sharp detail. Charity Bryant was born in 1777 to a consumptive mother who died a month later. Raised in Massachusetts, Charity developed into a brilliant and strong-willed woman with a passion for her own sex. After being banished from her family home by her father at age twenty, she traveled throughout Massachusetts, working as a teacher, making intimate female friends,…
People sometimes say that the purpose of anthropology is to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. I think the same about history. As these books demonstrate, apparently normal early Americans have complex and unique inner lives, while those who seem bizarre, remote, or august, in fact, have wholly relatable human experiences. I usually write about complicated systems, like insurance and law. But I cherish these books about outcasts, oddballs, and one-of-a-kinds. They remind me that our society comprises individuals whose life experiences, worldviews, and decisions are unique—and ultimately unpredictable. Whenever I write, I try to remember that.
Benjamin Franklin might be a Founding Father (I know, yawn), but he's also a real weirdo, and in my opinion, he's the only eighteenth-century American whose jokes still hold up.
His life story is full of relatable confessions: he fails at vegetarianism, chastity, and resisting the appeals of traveling fundraisers. He's so intent on convincing me of his honesty that he sometimes makes me suspicious. "Am I getting conned?" I ask myself. "Is this guy actually telling me all this to sell me something?" But I'm having such a good time listening to him that I just decide not to care.
Benjamin Franklin's account of his rise from poverty and obscurity to affluence and fame is a self-portrait of a quintessential American which has charmed every generation of readers since it first appeared in 1791. Begun as a collection of anecdotes for his son, the memoir grew into a history of his remarkable achievements in the literary, scientific and political realms. A printer, inventor, scientist, diplomat and statesman, Franklin was also a brilliant writer whose wit and wisdom shine on every page. Franklin was a remarkably prolific author, well known in his lifetime for his humorous, philosophical, parodic and satirical writings,…
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the hidden histories of everyday things, especially in media and popular culture. (Who were those people on TV laugh tracks? Where did Muzak records come from?) A career in broadcasting only sharpened this interest, informing two decades of writing and performing.
That this book even exists is amazing. By the end, it seems less like an exposé than an all-in wager on the power of truth. The final few chapters alone are worth the price of admission, and while Alex Gibney's documentary of the same name is well worth watching, Lawrence Wright's book is—for now, and perhaps for all time—the definitive look at a secretive world.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower comes “an utterly necessary story” (The Wall Street Journal) that pulls back the curtain on the church of Scientology: one of the most secretive organizations at work today. • The Basis for the HBO Documentary.
Scientology presents itself as a scientific approach to spiritual enlightenment, but its practices have long been shrouded in mystery. Now Lawrence Wright—armed with his investigative talents, years of archival research, and more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—uncovers…
I began reading about religion, cults, and “high demand” groups to help me understand the group I was writing about in The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy and the Wild Life of an American Commune. In my book, the central question was how could so many smart, highly educated people allow their lives to be taken over by a group of psychotherapists. As a result, it was crucial for me to understand what draws people into new religions and holds them in groups that others may consider extreme or bizarre.
The Road to Jonestown is a solid, comprehensive account of the long road that led Jim Jones and more than 900 of his followers to take their lives in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978, by literally drinking the Kool-Aid.
What Guinn does well is show the early appeal of Jones’s church, its message of inter-racial harmony and social justice which attracted many idealistic young people as well as a substantial number of African-American followers. The book explains Jones’ repeated contacts with Father Divine and his Peace Mission movement.
Jones was a complex mix of charismatic preacher and flim-flam man – both deeply insecure and wildly grandiose with a pronounced tendency toward victimhood and paranoia which became increasingly pronounced as he led his group to its apocalypse.
In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones's life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people…
I began reading about religion, cults, and “high demand” groups to help me understand the group I was writing about in The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy and the Wild Life of an American Commune. In my book, the central question was how could so many smart, highly educated people allow their lives to be taken over by a group of psychotherapists. As a result, it was crucial for me to understand what draws people into new religions and holds them in groups that others may consider extreme or bizarre.
For a theoretical and psychological understanding of the workings of cults, I would strongly recommend the work of Robert Jay Lifton, in particular, his most recent book Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealoutry, which brings together many of his writings over the years on the subject of cults and what he called “totalizing” groups, ones which demand absolute commitment.
Lifton, who wrote about “Nazi Doctors," the Chinese cultural revolution, and the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan, which carried out a deadly sarin attack on a Tokyo subway in 1987, grasped that the mechanism of belief and allegiance that bind both political and religious movements are essentially the same.
Lifton worked out eight criteria for thought control that groups commonly used that went from “Milieu Control,” (isolating members and control the information they are exposed to) and “Demand for Purity” (in which the good…
Robert Jay Lifton, the National Book Award-winning psychiatrist, historian, and public intellectual, proposes a radical idea: that the psychological relationship between extremist political movements and fanatical religious cults may be much closer than anyone thought. Exploring the most extreme manifestations of human zealotry, Lifton highlights an array of leaders - from Mao to Hitler to the Japanese apocalyptic cult leader Shoko Asahara to Donald Trump - who have sought the control of human minds and the ownership of reality.
I began reading about religion, cults, and “high demand” groups to help me understand the group I was writing about in The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy and the Wild Life of an American Commune. In my book, the central question was how could so many smart, highly educated people allow their lives to be taken over by a group of psychotherapists. As a result, it was crucial for me to understand what draws people into new religions and holds them in groups that others may consider extreme or bizarre.
The “perfectionist” community at Oneida, NY was, perhaps, the closest analogue to the polygamous group I wrote about in my book.
In reaction to the strict Calvinist faith of his Puritan forefathers, with their deep conviction in original sin, John Humphrey Noyes believed that it was possible to be without sin in this world.
He believed that in heaven people would be paired with their true “spiritual” wife or husband, different from the imperfect matches that people made on earth. This evolved in Noyes’ idea of “complex marriage,” in which everyone in his community was free to have sex with anyone else, in order to get beyond the jealous, possessive, and exclusive nature of traditional marriage.
In 1848, Noyes founded his own community in Oneida, which eventually grew to include about 300 people before it fell apart in 1879. In order to avoid a plethora of children, Noyes preached the…
Amidst the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening, John Humphrey Noyes, a spirited but socially awkward young man, attracted a group of devoted followers with his fiery sermons about creating Jesus' millennial kingdom here on earth. Noyes and his followers built a large communal house in rural New York where they engaged in what Noyes called "complex marriage," an elaborate system of free love where sexual relations with multiple partners was encouraged. Noyes was eventually inspired to institute a program of eugenics, known as "stirpiculture," to breed a new generation of Oneidans from the best members of the Community…
