Early Mormon Documents, Vol. 5

Rating:
Summary: A Great Ending to a Great Series
Review: Dan Vogel finishes his series of books on Early Mormon Documents with Volume V just as strongly as he started. Over five volumes, he has successfully gathered, collated and correlated a vast amount of data. These documents represent a wide view and a fair and balanced approach to events that, to say the least, were mysterious, strange and even wonderful to many faithful LDS. Volume V covers documents from those individuals associated with Joseph Smith in Fayette. Among these, the Peter Whitmer family are most prominent. Documents related to David Whitmer, the only one of the three witnesses who did not rejoin the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints headed by Brigham Young, are found to be eye-opening and yet still an enigma.
The timeline at the conclusion of Volume V constructed by the author must be considered as one of the most authoritative overviews of the events in the life of Joseph Smith leading up to and including the foundation of the Church.
Dan Vogel has done a great service for historians and researchers of Joseph Smith and the early period of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is about as unbiased as any reasonable person could expect. Thus I would predict that some will find these documents faith-promoting and others will find them faith-limiting depending on the individual reader's outlook and intent.
For myself, I see no reason for LDS to avoid the details of the early aspect of their church. Dan Vogel has brought a great deal of information to light because these events transpired in the modern era. Surely there would be even less savory accounts of early Christianity or Islam if we had the luxury of the types of extant documents that this author has compiled.
I recommend this book wholehearedly, along with its prior volumes, to anyone with a more than passing curiosity as to the events in the life of the young Joseph Smith and the formation of what must be recognized as a new world religion.