Latter Days by Coke Newell

Brother Newell works for the Church's Public Affairs Department, which makes it all the more surprising to find that he has an authentic, non-correlated voice. (I doubt a story about horse pee as his opening anecdote would have made it through correlation.) And this is, perhaps, the best part of the book.

There are some serious weaknesses here, however. For a book subtitled "A Guided Tour Through Six Billion Years of Mormonism," he spends an inordinate amount of time on the Joseph and Brigham eras (maybe 80% of the book), with most of the other prophets getting a scant paragraph or so. And in his pre- and post-Latter Day sections, I think he is subject to some unnecessary speculations and odd positions. For example, he states that the Church uses the KJV because it is the best translation available. I don't think anyone believes this--or should believe it. (I fully support the Church's use of the KJV, because it is the language of the Restoration, but there is no way to defend the idea that the KJV is the best English translation.) That said, he does handle some issues, such as polygamy, blacks and the priesthood, etc., very well, by resisting the urge to speculate and acknowledging what we simply don't know.

He claims to be writing for nonmembers, but I wonder how many nonmembers would/should actually read this book. I suppose it is a reasonable Church history, but he is so spotty on the Church in the 20th/21st century. He does remedy some of this with an appendix of important doctrines (but very little about practices), but the appendix suffers from personal hobby horses (should 80% of the text of gender roles really concern the percentage of women with young children in Utah who work?).

I can't necessarily recommend this, but it was an interesting read.