I notice that he claims that Joseph Smith had 38 wives.
Excerpt from the jacket flap:
This same pattern is also apparent in the example of Bishop Edwin Woolley, who in 1843, as a missionary in Connecticut, met Louisa Rising and convinced her to marry him. She did so without first divorcing her legal husband. Other men courted potential plural wives on their missions: William Clayton, Heber Kimball, and Parley Pratt, all of whose stories are related in this volume as part of the curious saga of the initiation of plural marriage.
According to Klaus J. Hansen:
"This is a thorough investigation of sexual politics in the City of the Saints, the 1840s Mormon headquarters in the U.S. State of Illinois, written with precision, clarity, and ease. It is a major contribution to Mormon history, groundbreaking in detailing the other polygamists who followed the lead of their prophet, Joseph Smith, in taking multiple partners." —Klaus J. Hansen, Professor Emeritus of History, Queen's University, Ontario; author of Mormonism and the American Experience
And a report in the Chicago Tribune (13 Feb, 2009)
George D. Smith's accounting of marriages adds five to the 33 that most scholars agree can be documented for Joseph Smith. The actual number may never be known.
Some church Sunday school manuals have also eliminated or glossed over references to the plural wives of 19th century church presidents, including Brigham Young, who by George D. Smith's accounting had 56 wives.
That denial of history in part drove George D. Smith's curiosity and the book.
"I guess I was intrigued by the obvious forgetting," said the author, whose research is largely based on documents and diaries held in the Mormon church archives.
"Here is something that was so elemental to the organization of the Mormons and yet there is this obvious lack of understanding. So the question is, why is the institution trying to forget?" he asked. "They are really trying to rinse the color out of LDS history."
