In the first edition of The Mormon Mirage, Latayne C. Scott shared her remarkable journey out of Mormonism as she uncovered shocking inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the faith she had loved and lived. Thirty years later, Mormonism and Mormon scholarship have evolved with the times. In this third, revised and updated edition of her well-known book, Scott keeps pace with changes and advances in Mormonism, and reveals formidable new challenges to its claims and teachings. The Mormon Mirage provides fascinating, carefully documented insights into • DNA research’s withering implications for the Book of Mormon • the impact of new “revelations” on Latter-day Saint (LDS) race relations • new findings about Mormon history • increasing publicity about LDS splinter groups, particularly polygamous ones • recent disavowals of long-held doctrines by church leadership • the rise of Mormon apologetics on the Internet More than a riveting, insider’s scrutiny of the Mormon faith, this book is a testimony to the trustworthiness of Scripture and the grace of Jesus Christ.

A comprehensive survey of all the major alternative religions in the United States, including the new groups since the 1960s.

Once touted as the bright hope for feeding the world's growing population, desert irrigation now threatens to destroy the very prosperity it was meant to create. Sounding the alarm, Mirage traces the development of desert farming, successfully initiated in British India and the American West, and shows the startling, calamitous results of this shortsighted enterprise. With monumental dams and complex technology we have made the desert bloom, only to see those labors eventually poison the land, ruining it for future cultivation and devastating fragile ecosystems. Chronicling the history of desert agriculture and irrigation in India and the later application of these techniques in the western United States and elsewhere, Clemings portrays ecosystems assaulted by invasive practices and crop irrigation methods designed without heed to the consequences. From the canal colonies of the Indus River basin to the massive dams of the lower Colorado River, we see the disastrous results of bringing arid lands under the agricultural yoke at any cost. With one-third of the world's crops raised on irrigated lands, the problems of sustainability have serious consequences. One of the most dire results has already been witnessed in the devastation at Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in California. In less than four years, Kesterson went from a "thriving wildlife refuge to a death trap". Dead fish, deformed chickens, and the death of thousands of migratory birds resulted from the subsurface drainage of irrigated lands, causing some to call the occurrence the "Three Mile Island of desert agriculture".

Shepperson explains the process of mirage building by introducing readers to details from myriad sources--journals, diaries, historic newspapers, government reports, essays, magazines, novels, and even chamber of commerce promotional brochures. The well-known accents of John C. Fremont, Mark Twain, and Dan De Quille mingle with such little-known voices as Louise M. Palmer, Henry T. Williams, and George Wharton James among others. While the exemplary voices may express paradox, self-contradiction, antithesis, even confusion, Shepperson arranges his examples in a way that shows readers an aggregate vision. For him, Nevada history and Nevada humanity together embrace the length of Highway 395, the width of Interstates 80 and 15, and the breadth of a good many gravel roads in between. Essentially Shepperson sees few meaningful differences between the Comstock of the 1860s, other mining camps, sheep and cattle operations, Reno of the 1930s, and the present-day Las Vegas.

These photographic books enabled the images to speak directly to the viewer.

Analyzes the result of the trouncing of progressive idealism in 1919. Shows how the collapse of President Wilson's brand of liberalism, the failure of the very individual Marxist experiments in Germany and Hungary, the rout of the belligerent anarchism of d'Annunzio in Italy and Makhno in the Ukraine and the eclipse of the more libertarian Russian Communists led to the triumph of the monolithic ideologies: one hundred per cent American-ism, Moscow-style Communism, Fascism.

This definitive work covers every aspect of the history, beliefs, and practices of this influential American religious sect. An indispensable, one-volume library on the subject, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Mormonism comprehensively traces the roots of Mormonism and examines all of its major doctrines.