From the September 1982 edition of the Sunstone Review. BYU’s Wilkinson Center bowling alley comes in dead last according to the October Playboy’s ranking of “sex on campus” among 20 American universities. BYU’s sexual temperature was a frigid 4 degrees while the “frontier free-for-all” University of Texas (Austin) boiled at a libidinous 212. In fourteen …
Category: History
Before the Bombs: A Mark Hofmann Interview
In September 1982, the Sunstone Review published an interview with Mark Hofmann. At the time, Hofmann was known for having found a series of extraordinary historical documents. One was the Anthon transcript, which contained symbols Joseph Smith allegedly copied from the golden plates and sent to New York scholar Charles Anthon. Another contained an alleged …
Household Codes and “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”
By M. David Huston M. David Huston lives and works in the Washington, DC metro area. He is a husband and the father of four children. Although it remains outside the LDS Church’s canonized scripture, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” (hereafter, “the Proclamation”) is framed authoritatively. It ascribes “divine design” to the …
The Children’s Friend on Mushrooms
Recently I saw Ardis Parshall of Keepapitchinin post the August 1925 cover of The Children’s Friend (the official publication of the LDS Church’s Primary organization). What made the image interesting was the fact that it showed two children sitting with their dog in front of a gigantic mushroom. The mushroom had windows and doors in …
“A Brother in the Pale-face”: White Mormons and Indigenous Polygamies
By Amanda Hendrix-Komoto Amanda Hendrix-Komoto has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan. She is the author of “Undressing Mahana: The Development of Mormon Modesty Culture and the Display of Polynesian Bodies,” forthcoming in Out of Obscurity: Mormonism after 1945 from Oxford University Press. When Mormons adopted polygamy in the mid-nineteenth century, …
“The Custom of his Nation”: William McCary and the Racialization of Plural Marriage
By Angela Pulley Hudson Angela Pulley Hudson is the author of Real Native Genius: How an Ex-slave and a White Mormon became Famous Indians (University of North Carolina Press, 2015). She is an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University and can be reached at aphudson@tamu.edu. When envisioning Mormon polygamists, people of color …
Background and Fallout of My 1985 Article: “LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890–1904”
By D. Michael Quinn D. Michael Quinn is the award-winning author of many articles and books on Mormon history including Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Signature, 1998) and the upcoming The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power (Signature, 2016). Prologue I was recently asked1 to describe the background of the 97-page …
Daniel Webster Jones: A Western Hero
By Victoria Riskin Victoria Riskin is an award-winning television writer, former president of the Writers Guild of America West, and the author of Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir. Or download the audio file here: Daniel Webster Jones: A Western Hero A statue of Daniel Webster, the great American …
Polygamy and the Early Mormon Hawaiian Mission
By John J. Hammond John J. Hammond has a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He taught political science and philosophy at Kent State University for thirty-five years, retiring in 2007. For the past fourteen years, he has enjoyed researching Mormon topics. Or right-click here to download the audio. …
Danites, Damsels, and World Domination: Mormons in the Dime Novels
By Michael Austin Michael Austin is co-editor of the Mormon Image in Literature series from Greg Kofford Books, which includes annotated reprints of 19th-century novels about Mormons including many of the works mentioned in this article such as The Doomed Dozen, The Bradys among the Mormons, and Eagle Plume: The White Avenger. Or …