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How an accidental historian won over critics and shed light on two of Mormonismâs darkest hours
(Leah Hogsten | Tribune file photo) Richard Turley holds one of Joseph Smith s personal documents during a news conference to announce a release in the Joseph Smith Papers project in 2013. Turley recently retired. | Updated: March 4, 2021, 3:33 p.m.
It was 1986, a dark time for Mormon historians.
Just months earlier, infamous document collector Mark Hofmann had forged his way into the market for historical pieces relating to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints â even fooling church President Spencer W. Kimball and future President Gordon B. Hinckley, with his supposedly fabulous finds â and then killing two innocent members to cover his double-dealing and deceit.
âMormon Landâ: Historian Richard Bushman explores faith, doubt, the gold plates, prophetic fallibility and feminism
Author of Joseph Smith biography also talks about how he came to believe and how the LDS Church can be a force for good in the world.
(Rick Egan | Tribune file photo) Mormon historian Richard Bushman speaks at Benchmark Books in South Salt Lake in 2018.
  | Jan. 7, 2021, 3:23 p.m.
In a wide-ranging interview published in Sundayâs Salt Lake Tribune, revered Mormon historian Richard Bushman, author of the acclaimed Joseph Smith biography âRough Stone Rolling,â talked at length about his childhood in Oregon, his mission in New England and his education at Harvard, where he wrestled with his faith in God.
| Updated: Jan. 1, 2021, 9:13 p.m.
Nearing his 90th birthday, Richard Lyman Bushman is the godfather, or, should we say, the patriarch of Mormon history.
As an emeritus history professor at Columbia University, with a chair of Mormon studies named in his honor at the University of Virginia, and the author of “Rough Stone Rolling,” the much-heralded biography of church founder Joseph Smith, Bushman is revered as a gentle, thoughtful scholar, who explores the past and present of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with an evenhanded but deft touch.
He is married to the inimitable Claudia Lauper Bushman, also an American historian, scholar, and writer who helped found Exponent II, a feminist magazine for Latter-day Saint women. The couple have six children.