Here are 26 books that Carthage Conspiracy fans have personally recommended if you like
Carthage Conspiracy.
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People sometimes say that the purpose of anthropology is to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. I think the same about history. As these books demonstrate, apparently normal early Americans have complex and unique inner lives, while those who seem bizarre, remote, or august, in fact, have wholly relatable human experiences. I usually write about complicated systems, like insurance and law. But I cherish these books about outcasts, oddballs, and one-of-a-kinds. They remind me that our society comprises individuals whose life experiences, worldviews, and decisions are unique—and ultimately unpredictable. Whenever I write, I try to remember that.
I shouldn't be recommending this book. Its sources are limited. Its psychological approach to its subject is outdated. Worst of all, its author earned degrees in literature, not history! (I'm a history professor.) But I don't care.
I find this book electrifying. It is the work of a dogged gumshoe investigator, a mother in her 20s, who relentlessly dug up the long-concealed secrets of one of America's most extraordinary national stories: the life and death of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter-Day Saints movement.
This book shows the most thrilling part of being a historian: finding things out. "No man knows my history," Joseph Smith once claimed. The title of this book is a sly rejoinder: Maybe once, no man knew your history, but now, one woman does.
The first paperback edition of the classic biography of the founder of the Mormon church, this book attempts to answer the questions that continue to surround Joseph Smith. Was he a genuine prophet, or a gifted fabulist who became enthralled by the products of his imagination and ended up being martyred for them? 24 pages of photos. Map.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
In 2012, a publisher asked me if I wanted to write a book about Joseph Smith's assassination. I leapt at the chance, in part because I was fascinated by Smith and the Latter-day Saints, and in part because I appreciated how many of the important contributions to Mormon history --- including Fawn Brodie’s famous biography of Joseph Smith, or the first honest and comprehensive account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre -- sprang from the pens of women and men with no formal academic training. By contrast, many “scholars” have disgraced themselves with prevaricating or pusillanimous accounts of the religion’s raucous and fascinating 190-year history. So jump in! Never a dull moment with the Latter-day Saints!
This is an honest book about Joseph Smith’s first, and only “real” wife, Emma, who virulently opposed polygamy and, after Joseph’s death, convinced herself that it never existed. Emma is one of the three titans of Mormon history: she, her husband, and the subject of my next pick.
Mormon Enigma is the bestselling biography of Emma Hale Smith, wife of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. It was Joseph Smith who announced that an angel of the Lord had commanded him to introduce a 'new order of marriage.' And it was Emma Hale Smith who confronted the practice of polygamy head on.
As the authors note in their introduction, "Early leaders in Utah castigated Emma from their pulpits for opposing Brigham Young and the practice of polygamy, and for lending support to the Reorganization. As these attitudes filtered down through the years, Emma was virtually written out of…
In 2012, a publisher asked me if I wanted to write a book about Joseph Smith's assassination. I leapt at the chance, in part because I was fascinated by Smith and the Latter-day Saints, and in part because I appreciated how many of the important contributions to Mormon history --- including Fawn Brodie’s famous biography of Joseph Smith, or the first honest and comprehensive account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre -- sprang from the pens of women and men with no formal academic training. By contrast, many “scholars” have disgraced themselves with prevaricating or pusillanimous accounts of the religion’s raucous and fascinating 190-year history. So jump in! Never a dull moment with the Latter-day Saints!
You hear a lot about John C. Fremont and Kit Carson, but square mile for square mile, Brigham Young is the man who built the American West. He dispatched Latter-day Saints to settle the following states, either wholly or in part: Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, and Oregon.
Brigham Young was a rough-hewn craftsman from New York whose impoverished and obscure life was electrified by the Mormon faith. He trudged around the United States and England to gain converts for Mormonism, spoke in spiritual tongues, married more than fifty women, and eventually transformed a barren desert into his vision of the Kingdom of God. While previous accounts of his life have been distorted by hagiography or polemical expose, John Turner provides a fully realized portrait of a colossal figure in American religion, politics, and westward expansion.
After the 1844 murder of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Young gathered those…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
In 2012, a publisher asked me if I wanted to write a book about Joseph Smith's assassination. I leapt at the chance, in part because I was fascinated by Smith and the Latter-day Saints, and in part because I appreciated how many of the important contributions to Mormon history --- including Fawn Brodie’s famous biography of Joseph Smith, or the first honest and comprehensive account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre -- sprang from the pens of women and men with no formal academic training. By contrast, many “scholars” have disgraced themselves with prevaricating or pusillanimous accounts of the religion’s raucous and fascinating 190-year history. So jump in! Never a dull moment with the Latter-day Saints!
These heart-wrenching biographies of 33 of Joseph Smith’s wives were the first, in-depth exploration of the social and emotional costs of Mormon polygamy. Loneliness appeared in 1997. The church waited until November 2014, six months after the publication of American Crucifixion, to officially acknowledge that Joseph had up to 40 wives.
Beginning in the 1830s, at least thirty-three women married Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. These were passionate relationships which also had some longevity, except in cases such as that of two young sisters, one of whom was discovered by Joseph’s first wife, Emma, in a locked bedroom with the prophet. Emma remained a steadfast opponent of polygamy throughout her life.
The majority of Smith’s wives were younger than he, and one-third were between fourteen and twenty years of age. Another third were already married, and some of the husbands served as witnesses at their own wife’s polyandrous wedding. In…
My life is divided into two parts: before I left the cult I was involved in during my 20s, and after. Leaving the cult created a reckoning in my life unlike anything I’ve experienced before or since. It was both the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and the best. As a result, I connect deeply with others’ stories of grief, loss, and the challenging times in life that make us. As an author, I have carried these themes into my mystery novels. I hope you experience as much resonance from the books on this list as I have.
This book parallels my own journey of leaving a spiritual group, which is no doubt why this memoir is so precious to me. I’ve probably read this book six times. The author writes with confidence, humility, and humor that I find both deeply touching and inspirational.
Beck grew up in a family where her father was an apologist for the Latter Day Saints (Mormons). Her personal reckoning with that religion and her journey to finding her own version of faith is one that everyone with an interest in the human experience will be able to relate to.
As “Mormon royalty” within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Martha Beck was raised in a home frequented by the Church’s high elders in an existence framed by the strictest code of conduct. As an adult, she moved to the east coast, outside of her Mormon enclave for the first time in her life. When her son was born with Down syndrome, Martha and her husband left their graduate programs at Harvard to return to Utah, where they knew the supportive Mormon community would embrace them.
But when she was hired to teach at Brigham Young University, Martha…
I have always loved the unbridled life of the natural world. Long before I knew the term ‘forest bathing,’ I wandered the wild country around my home, where green became my favorite color and I bathed in the verdure of its fields and woods. And I have always been drawn to compelling stories. One of the first books I remember was about a WWII pilot downed in the Pacific who survived for weeks on a raft. Finally, my sophomore year in college introduced me to the love of language and good writing that has continued to deepen and become more profound. To put it simply, I love a good story well-told.
I love fiction and nonfiction and part of the reason I’ve included one of Krakauer’s books is because he’s an excellent author of nonfiction.
I feel like I needed to include a nonfiction book, and I’ve thought much about Krakauer’s book since reading it a decade ago.
This book has it all: a compelling story, murder, the history of a myth (the Mormon religion), the reasons for religious extremism, and more. It’s a great story, well told, within the kind of context you look for in a nonfiction book. And, like the other books on this list, it opened my eyes about many different perspectives.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. Now an the acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU.
“Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities.
At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty,…
Big Ideas... For Small Businesses
by
John Lamerton,
Big Ideas… for Small Businesses is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide to growing a small business without sacrificing your lifestyle. Written by a former civil servant turned entrepreneur, the book challenges hustle culture and instead champions the idea of an "ambitious lifestyle business" - one that provides freedom and financial stability,…
I have a life-long love of Westerns. I’ve researched the period and the events extensively. One of the first things I look for in any book I read is period accuracy. The books I write are historically accurate, though they are fiction. I’m on a mission, through my writing, to save the Western genre.
This was the first Western I read when I was young. It made an impression on me, not only as a Western, but as a classic story of good and evil with sharply drawn characters that make it come alive to the reader. Grey’s writing puts the reader right in the middle of every scene. And it has an ending you don’t see coming, but one that fits perfectly.
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
I'm a Professor in Geography at Trinity College Dublin and a Senior Research Associate in the School of Tourism and Hospitality at the University of Johannesburg. My research and teaching focus on the political economy of globalisation in Africa, and I'm interested in the ways in which current, massive global changes are impacting Africa and the prospects for its development based on constructed or available policy space. Sometimes there seems to be so much change in the world that it is hard to pick out what the most important trends are and their inter-relationships. I picked this book list based on what I see as some of the biggest changes in the world right now.
I’ve worked in information technology in the past but hadn’t really thought about the social information networks that undergird what we do and are as societies. Harari takes this slant on information networks and got me to think differently about how we organize ourselves, and to what effect.
As he notes, “power always stems from cooperation between large numbers of humans.” It is also very good on what the implications of AI might be for our future.
'If you read only one non-fiction book this year, consider this one' TOM HANKS
'If there's one book that I would urge everyone to read - it is Nexus' STEPHEN FRY
Discover the mind-blowing story of how information networks - from the stone age to AI - have shaped our world from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Sapiens. The perfect Christmas gift for curious minds.
Stories brought us together.
Books spread our ideas - and our mythologies.
The internet promised infinite knowledge.
The algorithm learned our secrets - and then turned us against each other.
I’ve written dozens of plays and books, always with heart and humor. If you love Christmas, you know that it can also be a frenzied time, so we all need to curl up on a cozy night and read Christmas stories to bring back the magic and generosity of this special holiday. I like well-told tales that reaffirm the love we know is so important, stories that will mean just as much a hundred years from now. And surprise endings are always a delight!
This touching tale, set on a farm, captures the timeless desire we all have to give the perfect gift to those we love. Rob learns the true meaning of love as he gives of himself, and finds a way to surprise his father. Buck has a beautiful way of showing rather than telling, and pulls us in with hope and vulnerability. A gift of love is the best gift of all, and Christmas is the perfect time to share this tender family story.
The true joy of Christmas is to love and to awaken love.
"Christmas Day in the Morning is as gorgeous as the day it celebrates. And unlike so many other presents, the real gift isn't the book itself, it's the simple, pure message. If you give anything this year, give love." --Jason F. Wright, New York Times best-selling author of Christmas Jars
In this adaptation of "Christmas Day in the Morning" Rob looks back on his boyhood and remembers giving an unusual gift of self a gift that filled him with Christmas joy. Now, fifty years later, Rob realizes he…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
Prior to writing my own works of fiction, I actually worked for several years as a romance ghostwriter. I’ve worked for many clients under various pseudonyms, and many of these titles have gone on to the Amazon Top 100 list (I just can’t tell you which one because I signed an NDA). I think that romance as a genre can be a wonderfully cathartic and escapist experience, allowing us the opportunity to swoon, pine, and giddily indulge in the joy of what it’s like to fall in love over and over again.
Deliver Me is without a doubt a tale that will stick with me for a very long time.
We follow Mia, a pastor’s daughter, who volunteers to write letters to prison inmates hoping to offer support and friendship regardless of the crimes they’ve committed. Gabriel Myers happens to be the recipient of these letters, but his tragic and cold backstory make it difficult for him to open up.
Watching their relationship grow from a place of distance to a place of genuine trust and love really drives home that the world is always better with love and compassion.
She's a pastor's daughter. He's a convicted killer. Forever may be out of reach when she falls in love with one of the dangerous ones.
Faith is more than just a word to Mia Anderson. It's the foundation of her life as a pastor's daughter. At home in her church and at peace with her beliefs, she decides to participate in a program to send letters to inmates regardless of what sins they may have committed.
Gabriel Myers is a convicted criminal, serving life in prison for his father's murder. Facing a hopeless future and haunted by a past that…
