Writing Mormon History 2: Authors' Stories Behind Their Works

Signature Books Podcast

Dive into the stories behind Mormonism’s best-known histories with Signature’s soon-to-be released anthology, Writing Mormon History 2. Authors and contributors Joe Geisner, Elisa Eastwood Pulido, Roger D. Launius, and Konden R. Smith Hansen join Signature editorial manager John Hatch for a lively discussion of their work behind their books that made Mormon history.

Joseph W. Geisner is an independent researcher who has published in the Journal of Mormon History, Sunstone, John Whitmer Historical Journal, Irreantum, and elsewhere. With Lavina Fielding Anderson, he created the chronologies found in Confessions of a Mormon Historian: The Diaries of Leonard J. Arrington. In 2020 Signature Books published his edited work, volume one of Writing Mormon History: Historians and Their Books.

Elisa Eastwood Pulido received her PhD in Religious Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Her book The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista: Mexican Mormon Evangelizer, Polygamist Dissident and Utopian Founder, 1878–1961, won Best Biography awards from the Mormon History Association and the John Whitmer Historical Association.

Roger D. Launius is principal of Launius Historical Services in Auburn, Alabama. He served as chief historian of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and as associate director for Collections and Curatorial Affairs at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. He is the author of Joseph Smith III: Pragmatic Prophet and Invisible Saints: A Study of Black Americans in the Reorganized Church, among several other books and articles on history and space exploration.

Konden R. Smith Hansen holds degrees in history, religious studies, and instructional design and technologies, and is lecturer of religious studies at the University of Arizona. His major publications include Frontier Religion: Mormons and America, 1857–1907, which won Best First Book from the Mormon History Association, and a co-edited volume with Michael Harold Paulos, The Reed Smoot Hearings: The Investigation of a Mormon Senator and the Making of an American Religion (2021), winner of Best Anthology from the John Whitmer Historical Association.