Over the course of the past year or so, several important scholarly works have been published carefully examining the life and career of Joseph Smith, namely Grant Palmer’s An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins, Dan Vogel’s Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet, and Clyde Forsberg’s Joseph Smith, Masonry, and the Advent of Mormonism. My presentation critically evaluates these recently published books within the context of the “new Mormon history” and ongoing effortsto solve what Jan Shipps sagaciously characterized the “prophet puzzle” in considering Mormonism’s founder as the complex, but ever-elusive personality that he was.

Newell G. Bringhurst, Devery S. Anderson