In many ways, the volume captures the strengths of the previous books while still avoiding some of their flaws: it has the historical rigor of Mormon Sisters, but is not limited in period and scope it is as interdisciplinary expanse of Sisters in Spirit without becoming too abstract and it has the cultural awareness of Women and Authority without coming across as overly activist. Women and Mormonism now joins that esteemed list. Previously, the arguably three most important titles in the field were Claudia Bushman’s Mormon Sisters: Women in Early Utah (Emmeline Press, 1976 reprint, Utah State University Press, 1997), Maureen Ursenbach Beecher and Lavina Anderson’s Sisters in Spirit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective (University of Illinois Press, 1987), and Maxine Hanks’s Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism (Signature Books, 1992). There is something about edited collections that make them the primary hallmarks of scholarship on Mormon women. Together, they demonstrate a level of methodological, chronological, and topical heft rarely seen in such a project. Most, but not all, were born as papers delivered at a conference on the topic several years ago. Edited by established scholars Kate Holbrook and Matthew Bowman, this is a volume of articles that explore the wide gamut of Mormon women’s experience. And then in the summer we received Women and Mormonism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives(University of Utah Press, 2016). Primary source compilations in Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings and The First Fifty Years of Relief Society were published early to much acclaim, and each volume is a significant resource for tracing not only LDS women’s traditions but American religious history in general. The last fourteen months have been great for scholarship on Mormon women.
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