Five best books on Mormonism

Samuel Morris Brown is Assistant Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Utah/Intermountain Medical Center and the translator of Aleksandr Men's Son of Man.

His new book is In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death.

For the Wall Street Journal, Brown named a five best list of books on Mormonism—its history, its meaning and its role in the modern world. One title on the list:

Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction
by Richard Bushman (2008)

This slender but informative volume is written by the dean of Mormon studies, Richard Bushman, an award-winning colonial historian and the premier biographer of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. Bushman deftly explores conflicts and currents within historic and contemporary Mormonism, including a brief exposition of early Mormon theology and a devotional highlight from a spiritual memoir by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. This book—a Berlitz guide of sorts to the complex world of modern Mormonism—is probably the most efficient way to grasp what it means to be a Mormon today.

Read about the other books on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Richard Bushman's Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.

--Marshal Zeringue