Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Lyman Bushman
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  95 reviews
Sales Rank: 61639
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 784
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 1400077532
Dewey Decimal Number: 200
EAN: 9781400077533
ASIN: 1400077532
Publication Date: March 13, 2007
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Product Description
Founder of the largest indigenous Christian church in American history, Joseph Smith published the 584-page Book of Mormon when he was twenty-three and went on to organize a church, found cities, and attract thousands of followers before his violent death at age thirty-eight. Richard Bushman, an esteemed cultural historian and a practicing Mormon, moves beyond the popular stereotype of Smith as a colorful fraud to explore his personality, his relationships with others, and how he received revelations.
An arresting narrative of the birth of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling also brilliantly evaluates the prophet’s bold contributions to Christian theology and his cultural place in the modern world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 90 more reviews...
 brilliantly written December 20, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am no Saint (by which I mean Latter Day), but I found this book to be fascinating & beautifully written. It was recommended to me by a friend who is a Saint, so I think it holds truth for both sides. I was shocked at how little of what I had in my head about Joseph Smith was true, & enthralled with his real life story & the story of his church. I appreciated that Bushman is a Saint but he is also able to explain things very well in an academic, not purely faithful, manner (& he hasn't gotten excommunicated either!). I am ashamed that we as Americans murdered Joseph Smith, man or prophet (or both), & drove the rest of the faithful out of the country (& did you know that when we wanted them back, Utah would only join the union if their women kept -- not gained, but kept -- their vote?). One cannot be interested in American history or the settling of the West without being curious about the LDS Church. No, I'm not pleased that the Church recently voted in measure 8, but after reading this book I can see that the fear & misconceptions that surrounded Joseph in his life are still with us today. Even if you are not a Saint, if you are a lover of truth, I highly recommend that try this book!
rock-solid biography November 7, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Richard Bushman's Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling sets a new standard for biography of controversial characters. Don't philosophize, extrapolate, psychoanalyze, or dramatize. Let the subject and his contemporaries speak for themselves in the context of the known facts. The figure who emerges will be more compelling than any embellished hero, caricature, or enigma.
This fine and accessible book delivers everything the inquisitive reader can hope for: a character study that expresses both the idiosyncrasies and internal consistency of the Joseph Smith's personality; an unvarnished portrayal of how he was perceived and treated by early Mormons (and their enemies); enough contextual material to clarify the conflicts that erupted within and around the Church; and a thorough, coherent description of how the prophet single-handedly founded a major new religion.
 Inoculation of the Saints October 6, 2008
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
There is no question that Bushman has done the hard work of researching the life of Joseph Smith. Having read gobs of biographical material on the man, I still learned some important insights about in this book, and more importantly, about the change in "vision" the modern church has 200 years later with regard to their founding prophet and his teachings. Make no mistake--this is a good book, and I recommend it often.
But there is a side to this book that warrants discussion, and I hope it gets it here.
This book serves the church's agenda. With the advent of the internet, information about Joseph Smith is more readily available than ever before, and members of the church can find all manner of unsavory tidbits by simply Googling "Joseph Smith" as they sit down to prepare their Priesthood lesson. Translating with his face in a hat, with the peepstone in the bottom; a penchant for folk magic and treasure seeking; the questionable evolution of polygamy and in particular, the Fanny Alger "afair"; the REAL vision of Zion; the debacle of Zion's Camp. And so on.
The church can no longer keep the "not-so-faithful" history from it's members, and so they were faced with a dilema. How do we acknowledge the reality of Smith's life, without undermining the testimony of countless members of the church? The solution? Ask Richard Bushman to write this book, and provide not only the validation of those "unsavory tidbits", but follow them up with enough spin that it leaves the members satisfied that, although things are not as they thought they were, they are still okay.
That's called inoculation. You expose them to a modified version of the virus, which might make them uncomfortable, but it won't kill them. And once they get over it, then nothing they read on the internet or anywhere else will again damage their testimony.
I have written elsewhere on the internet page after page after page, highlighting the spin of Rough Stone Rolling, but I'll cite here a single, glaring example. In Chapter 3: Translation, Bushman says, "After 1828, Joseph could no longer see that magic might have prepared him to believe in a revelation of gold plates and translation with a stone. It did not occur to him that without magic his family might have scoffed at his story of Moroni, as did the minister who rejected the First Vision. Magic had played its part and now could be cast aside." He goes on to describe folk magic as a "prepatory gospel", without which, the REAL gospel could not have come forth.
Are you KIDDING ME!?
I am familiar with the phrase, "God works in mysterious ways," but Bushman is suggesting that God works with the occult to prepare His prophets, because otherwise, God Himself is not going to be convincing enough when He taps his boy, Joe, on the shoulder and says, "Hey, I have gold plates."
But if the membership is prepared to believe that folk magic is a "prepatory gospel," then they no longer have to worry their "pretty little heads" about Joseph's money digging, or the use of peep stones.
The book is replete with examples such as this, excusing away the many versions of the First Vision, the obvious conundrum with the Book of Abraham having been derived from a common funerary papyrus, the scandals of Fanny Alger and the Kirtland Anti-Banking Society, etc. So, while it is meticulously researched on the one hand, be very aware that Bushman provides an "interpretation" that is couched in that research and makes it sound like it is sound reasoning supported by the tenets of the church.
It's not. It's spin.
Okay. Now, I know how these reviews work, so feel free to shred this and mark it "Unhelpful" because I know many who have come here to find out about this book are not going to care for this review. I suspect it will be relegated quickly to dustbin of "unhelpful" reviews. But I suggest it MIGHT be more helpful to discuss this, rather than just trash me.
Excellent book October 3, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm active in the LDS Church, and could see how this book might cause some people some concern, but if you recognize that Joseph Smith was a man, which Bushman does, it's very insightful and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Did not negatively affect my belief in the church or that Joseph Smith was who he claimed to be.
Review of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling September 2, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I believe this book is an excellent read for anyone interested in a fair, factual presentation of Joseph Smith and the early Mormon Church. The author is fair in presenting both the good and bad regarding one of the very influential American religious leaders. I would encourage both Mormons and non-Mormons to read this book. Mormons will find much that they are not taught in Sunday School and, yet, their faith might be strengthened, if they realize that Joseph Smith was a human with many faults. Those not belonging to the Mormon Church will learn much about the early years of our country and rather strange things about the early, formative Mormon Church.
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