American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church - Alex Beam - 2 Stars

American Crucifixion – Alex Beam – 2 Stars

Title: American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church

Author: Alex Beam

Publisher: PublicAfairs

Year: Hardcover 2014 – Softcover 2016

Rating:   2 STARS

 

Price and Purchasing Options: The best way to get this book is probably throughAmazon – for around $20.  You probably won’t find this in a Deseret Book or Deseret Industries; however, you will find it in any Barnes and Noble, or any other retail bookstores.  You can also find a couple copies on eBay (here) but probably not super cheap, just cheaper than retail.

Review:   I can’t say that I am disappointed by the book, as much as I don’t really see a great deal of value to the book or the way it was written.  Most of the material here of value can be found with a good Google search and off of Wikipedia. 

The book covers the trial and assassination of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum Smith.  The value of the book is that it covers the course of the trial, as well as the course of the trials of those who participated in the mob assassination. 

There is some value to the book, because previous to this for a number of generations, the LDS community developed a number of rumors on the terrible consequences to those who participated.  This eventually developed into a published book titles The Fate of the Persecutors – which is a fairly humorous book when considering that in hindsight the book had been proven to be fairly wrong.  In that light this book has some interesting value in shedding more light on what actually happened to these persecutors.

The struggle I have with the book is that the book takes no stand on Joseph Smith, which I normally would appreciate in a text like this, but it also doesn’t give any background to allow the reader to determine for themselves.  In fact, it is a little slated towards the negative regarding Joseph, yet the primary audience that would show interest in the book would be LDS.  If the book was crafted with an interest for non-LDS, than more background (even anti background) would have been necessary.  To understand the book, you already need to have a fairly competent knowledge on Joseph Smith and if not, than you wouldn’t find any value in the book.

In addition to this there are two pet peeves that I personally have that this book hit.

First, the book has a title and marketed in one direction, and doesn’t fulfill on the positioning at all.  It is a title and content bait and switch.  The book is titled American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church.  With “American Crucifixion” you would expect some comparison or correlation between the assassination of Joseph Smith and the crucifixion of Christ.  As potentially blasphemous as that sounds, there is ample content.  Beam could have addressed how the aftermath was similar, how the consequence of any religious founder effect the organization after, and even how the founder of a faith develops the environment that produces the consequences of his own martyrdom.  In this light Beam doesn’t address or fulfill the assumptions of the main title of the book. 

The next bait and switch in the title is the “the Fate of the Mormon church.”  Beam doesn’t actually cover the fate of the Mormon Church, but the fare of those who murdered Smith.  Again, another area with plenty of content, addressing the fate or influence of a founders murder to the church, where Beam doesn’t address at all.

My second pet peeve hit, is in the first edition near the end of the book there were two or three chapters that didn’t seem to be edited with errors in spelling and grammatical uses.  Now I am not a great writer, so it is hard for me to be too judgmental, but I would hope that the editor of the text got “adjusted” in their job for it.

In that light this is an easy 2 Star Book – nothing more and nothing less.  The book hold some value but very little.  I would only read it if you are really really interested in having it on your shelf.  Otherwise Google the topic you want and skim through some pages there and get the content you want.  You shouldn’t proactively avoid or seek out this book. 

Suggestions:  The most readily available copy is going to be a little more than $20 at Amazon.  Enjoy if you really want to.

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Review #4

Tags: Joseph Smith (Topic), Alex Beam, 2 Star, Historical Documentary