I am currently reading Wife number 19 about Ann Eliza Young. Very interseting reading. For those of you who have not read it I would reccomend it.

It's entirely possible that the accounts might be exaggerated, but knowing what I know about MMM and other history of TSCC I would not be suprised if it was all spot on.

Whatever little bit of sympathy I may have had for the mormon people after being kicked out of all those place is entirely gone now. They brought it on themselves. According to the book, Joseph Smith taught that anything they wanted was theirs for the taking to help build the "kingdom of heaven" so they stole from everyone! So I completely understand why the people got sick of them and kicked them out. It had nothing to do with religious intolerance like the mos claim!

The thing that confuses me, how the hell the mormon religion survived? I know that Joseph Smith was a horrible person, a pedofile and a con man and he was also a theif. And he stole property, women, money, you name it, from his own followers, AND THEY CONTINUED TO FOLLOW HIM!!! Seriously people. Then there is Brigham Young. What a detestable human being he was! I think he may possibly have been a bigger douche than JS!

Ugggg! It drives me CRAZY that people can't see or refuse to see how FAKE TSCC is!

Anyway, interesting book. Have any of you read it? What are your thoughts about it? Do you think it was an accurate accounting of events in early Zion?

People followed Hitler and Al Capone...

True...some people are really stupid.

I've never thought of their followers as stupid.

I think there are two types of followers:

1. Those who hunger for power and want to be like JS and BY or succeed them.

2. Those who are innocent and sometimes desperate for spiritual guidance and refuge.

I detest the first and have pity for the second.

I came to the exact same conclusion. I say the church is filled with the cruel and the clueless.

I went from thinking JS was one of the greatest men ever on the planet, to thinking he was one of the biggest pigs on the planet.

I read Wife no 19 and it really opened my eyes to understand those who had been mistreated by the church and its freaky leaders.

When I was a missionary, I taught about the Blind leading the Blind...when it was ME who was blind.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2012 10:49AM by darksparks.

I thought it was a good book. I think she exaggerated some things, because she wrote it after divorcing Brigham Young and her purpose in writing it seemed to be to tell the Gentiles how bad the Mormons really are. I think the basic facts are probably true, but people will always tell a story in a way to make themselves look better, even if it's subconsciously.
Still, I thought it was great. Reading the book gave me a lot of insight into the way things were back then, and my own ancestors. I looked at it as an actual historical document, just one piece of the puzzle that can be used along with other sources. Very informative, and also shocking and very sad to see all the things those people went through.

There is also a movie called the 19th Wife starring Chyler Leigh.It is about a woman in a polygamous compound who is secretly reading Anm Eliza's book and it gives her courage to escape. Although the movie is not primarily about the book, it does explore some passages of the book as the character reads them. You can prolly find it on Netflix.

Thanks, I will check that out

I Just checked it out. The movie is available on youtube if you want to watch it.

I read a few chapters out of the book and I found it shocking and sad. Brigham Young wanted lots of wives, but he didn't want the responsibility of providing for those wives. Ann Eliza Young had a hard life. I admire her spirit, though.

It was one book that helped me to figure out that the Church was false. I read it in the Special Collections section of the BYU Harold B. Lee Library. I had to check into Special Collections every time and leave my belongings at the desk. I think BYU intentionally made it hard to find this book and other "anti-Mormon" material. I read it after graduating from BYU. I remember when Ann Eliza Young or maybe another of Brigham's wives threw a sewing machine down the stairs because it wasn't a Singer, and Brigham got her a Singer sewing machine in response.

The Tanners' "Mormonism: Shadow or Reality?" was another book I read for the first time in Special Collections at BYU.

I read these books in 1994/95, before the internet explosion. Had the internet existed before I went on a mission in 1989, I probably would have found these books online and perhaps never gone on a mission. At the present time I am in the process of reading Wife Number 19 in the form of an ebook.

Yes, it's quite a shock to realize just how horribly real those blood atonements were. You hear about them being just a myth, but there they are, described as they actually happened.

That was the part that bothered me the most. Imagine living with the fear that your family, friends, and neighbors could suddenly turn on you and try to kill you based on a suspicion that you were apostate. Even if you weren't actually apostate.

the Mormon Church survived after all of the deceipt, fraud, etc of Joseph Smith. Well, it very well may not have except for the death of Joseph and then Brigham's subsequent ascension to the leadership. Brigham was a ruthless despot and isolated the people which gave him time to control them long enough to reach critical mass.

For a great read on this you can download and read "Brigham Young and his Mormon Empire" (Free in pdf format) which was written by a contemporary.

http://archive.org/details/brighamyoungandh003273mbp

When I was at grad school at BYU, (early 1980s) a friend of mine who was a librarian and daughter of a GA, returned from her mission and was given a job in Harold B. Library to deal with certain books that were seen as accurate historical records, but contained ideas that were considered "faith demoting." Her job was to make sure students and faculty had access to faith promoting literature, while the rest was slowly removed to a locked up room. She left the church six months later.

After I also had left the church and moved to Los Angeles, she told me that what she had read in the removed books shocked her to the core. When she tried to talk about it with her Dad, all he would say was that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were very flawed men, but the church was still true. She stated to me that if the truth really came out over the rape, theft, murder and crimes that the early Mormon leaders participated in, people would run from the church as if Jim Jones himself was leading it.

I wish I knew what it was she was removing to put under lock and key! We may just be seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we have now that is already so damning.

Brigham Young is so flawed and embarrassing the church is steering the attention away from him and reinventing Joseph Smith.

Too bad Joseph was killed because he would have destroyed the church and it would not exist today. It was Brigham Young isolating the church and getting enough control over a new territory that allowed the church to survive.

Reality might actually be worse than the story versions.

A really good follow up to that book is "Rocky Mountain Saints" by T.B. Steinhouse.

Or "Tell it All" by Fanny Stenhouse.