Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling by Richard L Bushman, a review from Christian Science Monitor by Jane Lampman.
"How did a young man from a poor farm family ? who as a boy received minimal education and had little religious background ? come to found a church that today boasts millions of members worldwide?...In Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, historian Richard Bushman, professor emeritus at Columbia University and a practicing Mormon, fashions a fascinating, definitive biography of the rough-hewn Yankee who stirred controversy from the start. Bushman's intimate, 740-page portrait explores all the corners of controversy but does not resolve them, suggesting that ? given the nature of the man and his story ? such resolution is never likely to occur." Read the entire Christian Science Monitor review.