This book is great: its emphasis on sight and invisibility, its meta-emphasis on self-evaluation and self-deception, and its leaning into the Book of Mormon’s condemnation of wealth and departure from contemporary Latter-day Saint understandings. So much good stuff in here. The only thing keeping me from giving full marks is that I’ve skimmed it too quickly to critically evaluate (or appreciate) the throughlines of the book.

After recently finishing an excellent biography on Brigham Young, I’m starting to make my way through some other Mormon Studies books that I own but have not yet read. This has brought me to Paul Reeve’s Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness. It’s very good so far, and I regret having waited until now to read it. I’m currently working through Reeve’s chapters describing Mormons’ relationship with American Indians, and I just now read a paragraph that really surprised me. First, though, some background: