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You can download The History of the Saints for free. I am starting this thread for a book discussion. I hope others will participate. This thread is for anything that relates to the book or the author.

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I am struck by how many character witnesses Bennett has. He dedicates a lot of pages to that in the beginning of the book.

just me wrote:I am struck by how many character witnesses Bennett has. He dedicates a lot of pages to that in the beginning of the book.

I recently read Smith's well titled biography on Bennett, "The Saintly Scoundrel"
http://www.amazon.com/Saintly-Scoundrel-Life-Times-Bennett/dp/0252022823/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347999464&sr=1-1&keywords=The+saintly+scoundrel

He was very good at setting up diploma mills where ever he went and at collecting testimonials of his exploits. He accomplished quite a lot in his life but one thing he excelled at was self promotion. It is quite possible, had he focused on just one enterprise, like setting up his own Church, he might have been as successful as Joseph Smith,
As it was it seemed to rapidly loose interest in what ever he was doing and move on to the next thing. I suspect that many of those character witnesses were given by people at the beginning of their relationship with Bennett.

Fence Sitter wrote:

just me wrote:I am struck by how many character witnesses Bennett has. He dedicates a lot of pages to that in the beginning of the book.

I recently read Smith's well titled biography on Bennett, "The Saintly Scoundrel"
http://www.amazon.com/Saintly-Scoundrel-Life-Times-Bennett/dp/0252022823/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347999464&sr=1-1&keywords=The+saintly+scoundrel

He was very good at setting up diploma mills where ever he went and at collecting testimonials of his exploits. He accomplished quite a lot in his life but one thing he excelled at was self promotion. It is quite possible, had he focused on just one enterprise, like setting up his own Church, he might have been as successful as Joseph Smith,
As it was it seemed to rapidly loose interest in what ever he was doing and move on to the next thing. I suspect that many of those character witnesses were given by people at the beginning of their relationship with Bennett.

Some of them are newspaper clippings from when he was mayor and doing things for Nauvoo. He is quite a character, to be sure!