Perhaps a true-to-life biography of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, can never be written. Smith’s claims to accessing the divine were too outlandish, his embrace of polygamy too ...

In 2012, scholar John Turner published an award-winning biography of Brigham Young, a mountain of a man in Western Americana. But there remained a bigger fish to pursue, namely Joseph Smith, the ...

(RNS) — ‘I think the evidence for Joseph’s polygamous sealings is pretty overwhelming,’ says historian John Turner, who has penned a new biography of Joseph Smith. (RNS) — When John Turner’s biography ...

When John Turner’s biography of Brigham Young was published more than a decade ago, I marveled at his skill in dealing with a (very) complex historical subject fairly. He sifted through a mountain of ...