Three months before his death, Joseph Smith established the Council of Fifty, a confidential group that he believed would protect the Latter-day Saints in their

Best Book Award • Mormon History Association A brilliant young historian excavates the brief life of a lost Mormon city, uncovering a “grand, underappreciat

THE COUNCIL OF FIFTY: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY Jedediah S. Rogers, editor Documentary history 400 pp. 978-1-56085-224-7. hardback. $49.95.

A history of what became a romantic legend about a martyred prophet, a lost city, and religious persecution, this volume tells the story of Nauvoo, the early Mo