A frequently told story in Church history concerns the call of Artemus Millet to work on the Kirtland Temple. With variations here and there, historians have related the story as follows: Joseph Smith, in the company of other brethren, is walking where the Kirtland Temple will be built. He wonders aloud who could superintend its construction, and Joseph Young (or Brigham Young or Lorenzo Young) recommends an acquaintance named Artemus Millet, who lives in Canada. The Prophet then sends Brigham Young to Canada to baptize Millet and bring him to Kirtland with one thousand dollars. Historians then relate that Brigham Young fulfilled his mission with exactness, baptizing Millet in January 1832 (or 1833). Millet sells the family farm, takes his family to Kirtland, and labors on the temple from the laying of the cornerstone to the project's completion, having full charge of the work. The differing details within the story depend upon the source cited by the historian—Millet's diary, autobiography, biography, or family records and histories. Our purpose in this article is to examine the existing sources on Millet's conversion and his call to Kirtland in order to identify the elements of the story that can be historically corroborated and to demonstrate that Artemus Millet's greatest legacies of faith are his conversion and his lifelong commitment to establishing Zion.

Recent literature on history teaching has emphasized ‘doing history’ – whether as ‘active learning’, cognitive science, or with simple photocopies of primary sources. This article extends the discussion of a ‘signature pedagogy’ of history to include all aspects of the work of historians, from archival research through public presentation. It presents an approach for engaging undergraduates in historical research by identifying a public need, introducing the tasks to the students, teaching them to research and write historical work, and guiding them in the planning and execution of a public poster session and awards ceremony. Evidence for increased student engagement and understanding comes from classroom assessment and observation and both formal and informal student feedback gathered in upper-level college classes taught in Indiana (fall 2007) and Texas (spring 2009). By placing student learning outside of the context of the classroom, the approach promotes deep engagement with historical knowledge and the research process.

THE POLITICIANS AND PASTORS who revised the Texas social studies standards made national and international headlines. However, much of that coverage was sensational and squeezed the process into a narrow “culture war” storyline. Politics and the History Curriculum sets the debate over the Texas standards within a broader context by exploring the tangled and powerful mixture of politics, religion, media, and education. This volume provides a clear analysis of what happened and why, along with sensible recommendations for teachers and policy makers.

Mormon Women’s History: Beyond Biography demonstrates that the history and experience of Mormon women is central to the history of the Church and to histories of American religion, politics, and culture. Yet the study of Mormon women has mostly been confined to biographies, family histories, and women’s periodicals. The contributors to Mormon Women’s History engage the vast breadth of sources left by Mormon women—journals, diaries, letters, family histories, and periodicals as well as art, poetry, material culture, theological treatises, and genealogical records—to read between the lines, reconstruct connections, recover voices, reveal meanings, and recast stories.

In 1989, a copy of the Book of Mormon was donated to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints containing, purportedly, marginal annotations made by Elvis Presley. Over the next several years, various speakers, newspaper columnists, and even a documentary film producer made claims that Elvis really had made these markings. The author of this article, who is director of the Church History Library, conducted an in-depth analysis of the book and its markings. He worked with Elvis Presley handwriting authenticators and studied the final weeks of Elvis’s life. His analysis concluded that none of the annotations in the book came from Elvis, nor did he likely have time to read the book between the time it was given to him and his death. The evidence presented in this article shows that this story deserves to be discarded.

Contingent Citizens features fourteen essays that track changes in the ways Americans have perceived the Latter-day Saints since the 1830s. From presidential politics, to political violence, to the definition of marriage, to the meaning of sexual equality—the editors and contributors place Latter-day Saints within larger American histories of territorial expansion, religious mission, Constitutional interpretation, and state formation. These essays also show that the political support of the Latter-day Saints has proven valuable to other political groups at critical junctures.

Bridging the Gap provides numerous clear recommendations for addressing two daunting challenges facing K-16 history educators in the state of Texas–dozens of overlapping educational standards and a crisis in K-12 college preparation. It seeks to correlate the most important and relevant standards while at the same time offering recommendations designed to help teachers prepare students for college.