The first Latter-Day Saint loved to think of himself as inscrutable. In his last year he half-boasted: "You don't know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history." He left a mixed enough legacy: "divine revelations" on subjects ranging from the Church of God to the price of stocks; a dank aura of scandal; a church which, a century after his death, has a million members.
Saint or sinner, Joseph Smith Jr., founder and prophet of Mormonism, possessed a personality so powerful and fascinating that men, and women too, have sought...
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