The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young
The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young (5 book series)
Richard S. Van Wagoner
This five-volume series makes available every known published and previously unpublished sermon (discourse, speech, or public teaching) of Brigham Young, second president of the LDS Church. The texts are drawn from various manuscript collections at LDS Church Archives: Brigham Young Addresses, Brigham Young Minutes, Brigham Young Diaries, Brigham Young Office and Secretary Journals, Thomas Bullock Minutes, Willard Richards Diary, John D. Lee Journals, and Heber C. Kimball Journals, as well as from the “History of Brigham Young,” “Journal History of the Church,” Deseret News, History of the Church, Journal of Discourses, and Millennial Star.
Even those who are very familiar with Young’s life and teachings may be surprised to hear him say that God removed Elder Parley P. Pratt from his mortal existence because Pratt had committed adultery (“blood was spilt for adultery”), that Latter-day Saints should not eat pork and should probably refrain from meat altogether (“the use of beef, mutton, and pork should be dispensed with entirely”), and so on. Nevertheless, as Van Wagoner says of the collection, “As I worked on these transcripts, my esteem for President Young grew. His facility for language and ability to address complex issues on the fly rank him among the most able preachers and, as Utah’s governor, most talented politicians of the day—just as capable, I think, as any U.S. president of his time.”
ebook: $49.95 | $9.99 per volume
Richard S. Van Wagoner was the author of Mormon Polygamy: A History (1985, 1989), Lehi: Portraits of a Utah Town (1990), Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess (1994), Pioneering Lehi City: A 150-Year Pictorial History (2002), editor of The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, five volumes (2010), and coauthor of A Book of Mormons (1982). He published articles in BYU Studies, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Sunstone, Utah Historical Quarterly, and Utah Holiday. He received writing awards from the Dialogue Foundation, the John Whitmer Historical Association, the Mormon History Association, and the Utah State Historical Society. He earned an M.S. degree from Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah) in 1970. Trained as a clinical audiologist, he owned and operated Mountain West Hearing Center in Salt Lake City. He was a lifelong resident of Lehi, Utah; a founding member of the Lehi Historical Preservation Commission; and served as Lehi City’s Historical Archivist. He was a co-founder, a member of the Board of Directors, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of Signature Books (Salt Lake City).
