Rating: 
Summary: Let's discuss this particular edition
Review: The issue here is not whether The Book of Mormon is in some ultimate sense *True*; it's whether you want a CD-ROM facsimile edition of the 1830 first edition, plus index, plus additional commentary. If you just want a copy of the current edition of the Book of Mormon, phone the Mormons and they'll send you one for free that has cool full-page illustrations.The 1830 edition is the one you want if you're interested in the historical, religious, and literary context that gave rise to Joseph Smith and his church. It's the original version, and it has the original flavor. It hasn't been cleaned up. It hasn't been broken into numbered verses. It includes many instances of what the typesetter considered to be grammatical errors. But being a good typesetter, he set them anyway, because that's how the manuscript read; though he did bend his principles far enough to add punctuation and paragraph breaks. Remember: A sufficiently old typo stops being a typo and becomes a historical datum in its own right. Over the years since it was first published, the LDS church has made almost 4,000 changes in the text of the Book of Mormon. They represent these changes as insignificant -- just cleaning up little errors that have crept in. I am sorry to say that they're being unnecessarily untruthful on that point. Many of the small errors that have been corrected were there in the original printing. Their disingenuousness is more troubling than the errors themselves. After all, no one's ever claimed that spelling and grammar are numbered among the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. It must also be said that some of their emendations were not trivial, and can't be explained as anything but an attempt to alter the book's content. In one notorious instance (2 Nephi 30:6, page 117 in the 1830 edition), a word that had previously been "white" was changed to "pure" in the 1981 edition. This is not plausibly the correction of a simple error. It would take supernaturally bad handwriting to make "white" look like "pure" and vice-versa; and anyway, in the handwritten setting copy from which the typesetter worked (which is still in the possession of the RLDS church), the manuscript clearly says "white." If you're not into the historical/religious/literary context, you shouldn't expect to find this edition particularly scandalous, except maybe for the bit in the Book of Ether about Jared's daughter dancing the hootchy-cootch in front of Akish. What you will find is one of the most American books that's ever been written, one that's utterly characteristic of its place and time. Basically, the Book of Mormon is a romance of re-imagined history, written in imitation of the style of the KJV Bible. As a work of literature, it has considerable historic interest. It's a remarkable work of imagination for its period, especially given the author's limited experience and scant education. (Not an unprecedented achievement, though. Naive writers like Joseph Smith are merely rare.) Whether it's *True* or not is a question I'll leave for the reader.
Rating: 
Summary: Joseph Smith actually told some truth here.
Review: The only truth he told was in the front of the original (1830) ed of the Book of Mormon. He lists himself (correctly) as the author and proprietor of the work. Later editions claim his as a translator -- just like he translated the Kinderhook plates.
This "most correct book" contains numerous spelling errors and grammatical errors. Elohim's spell checker must have been off line when Joe was writing this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Controversial?
Review: This book is the heart of a lot of controversy, and that alone makes it worth the money to buy and read for yourself. I wonder at it's authenticity since names have changed, many words have been added, and many have been taken away. I would recommend any reader of this book to read it critically and compare it to a modern Book of Mormon, but the authenticity of this book will ultimately be based on faith.
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