The 2026
CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE
2026 Holiday Benefit Print by Walter Rane
Rockefeller Christmas Tree—A limited-edition print of 50 by the beloved artist
A Christmas Tradition
Walter Rane has lived in New York for nearly 30 years, across several periods of his artistic life, and every year he visits Rockefeller Center as part of his December celebrations. This etching comes out of his holiday family tradition. Rane sets the enormous tree against the tall Art Deco facade of 30 Rock and hatches it almost to black. Below it, a handful of skaters circle the rink beneath Prometheus.
Rane etched the copper plate, printed each impression himself, and presented the edition to the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. Every purchase supports our work with Latter-day Saint artists.
Give it to someone who has ever stood at a rail and watched skaters and marveled at a decorated outdoor tree, or just treasure it yourself.
Walter Rane (American, born 1949)
Rockefeller Christmas Tree (2026)
Etching, paper size 8 x 6 inches, image size 3.5 x 2.125 inches
Edition of 50, signed and numbered
$100 + shipping, unframed
This print is now OUT OF STOCK.
2026 Limited-Edition Holiday Print by Walter Rane
Walter Rane has lived in New York for nearly 30 years, across several periods of his artistic life, and every year he visits Rockefeller Center as part of his December celebrations. This etching comes out of his holiday family tradition. Rane sets the enormous tree against the tall Art Deco facade of 30 Rock and hatches it almost to black. Below it, a handful of skaters circle the rink beneath Prometheus.
Rane etched the copper plate, printed each impression himself, and presented the edition to the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. Every purchase supports our work with Latter-day Saint artists.
Give it to someone who has ever stood at a rail and watched skaters and marveled at a decorated outdoor tree, or just treasure it yourself.
Artwork details
Walter Rane (American, born 1949)
Rockefeller Christmas Tree (2026)
Etching, paper size 8 x 6 inches, image size 3.5 x 2.125 inches
Edition of 50, signed and numbered
$100 + shipping, unframed.
This print is out of stock.
More Original Prints Commissioned by the Center
2025 Limited-Edition Holiday Print by Tyler Gathro
Award-winning artist Tyler Gathro has created a quietly stunning landscape for this year’s commissioned holiday print—designed exclusively to support the work of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. The arched silhouette evokes a devotional window, inviting viewers to contemplate light, shadow, and the presence of the divine.
Embedded in the piece is a message punched in Braille from the artist’s own writings—an intimate reflection on faith as something felt before it is seen:
“I keep returning to the thought that Christ is the Word made flesh—the Word I can touch. His presence feels like a message rising under my fingers, asking me to trust what I cannot see. Faith is this way: slow, patient, learned by touch. In the shadows, His light is still enough. Each mark, each moment, spells grace into my skin. Christ—Word made tangible, Light unquenchable—more felt than seen.”
Artwork details
Tyler Gathro (American, born 1988)
More Felt Than Seen (2025)
Archival inkjet print on Hahnemuhle, hand-punched Braille, 11 x 8 inches
Edition of 50, signed and numbered
$100 + shipping, unframed
Commissioned by the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, 2025
Firmament Below is a cut-paper, limited edition print that juxtaposes the tangible elements of the earth (plants, our bodies, and the mortal world) with patterns that represent the spirit (a holy star and an offering with outstretched hands).
Wehle’s body of work concerns itself with the struggle between the spiritual and the temporal. Her art focuses upon the cycles of life, the seasons, and the relationships between growth and decay. In Firmament Below, she celebrates the birth of Christ and the elements of life.
The top sheet is handmade, heavyweight mulberry paper, and the sheet underneath is Unryu, a lightweight, translucent, long-fibered, green paper from Thailand made from the bark of the mulberry tree.
This work was commissioned by the Center as its 2024 annual Christmas print.
Elise Wehle (American, born 1986)
Firmament Below (2024)
Cut paper, 12.25 x 10.25 inches, signed and numbered, edition: 50
$100, plus $10 ground shipping. Uframed.
The wild, true story of She made the holidays delicious (2023):
In January 2021, a 48-year old man was arrested by the Boston police department. He had broken into Arden Gallery, destroyed and stole artworks, and tried to break into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with a small sledge hammer. Leslie Graff’s work was in that Arden Gallery show. Her painting, titled She made it delicious, was slashed by the thief and was unrepairable.
Now, to bring a destroyed work back to life, Graff has returned to the image for a new work. To accomplish it, she created a full-scale cake image paired, this time, with a 1950s wrapping paper pattern based on one her grandparents had in their Idaho fabric store, which they used to wrap her Christmas gifts every year. The artist was working on the painting as her grandmother passed away a month shy of 99 years old. Graff then created the smaller holiday scene for this project which she titled She made the holidays delicious.
This work was commissioned by the Center as its annual 2023 Christmas print.
Leslie Graff (American, born 1976)
She made the holidays delicious (2023)
Risograph print on Mohawk Via Vellum, 9 x 12 inches (image size), 11 x 14 inches (paper size), signed and numbered, edition: 50
Unframed. Quantities are limited.
An instant heirloom, this image is of Kershisnik's glorious angel with a common man's reaction. This print was the inaugural holiday benefit print to support the Center.
Brian Kershisnik (American, born 1962)
Gloria (2022)
Relief print 3.75 x 4.75 (image size), 9.1875 x 9.75 (sheet size), signed and number, edition: 50
SOLD OUT
Something to Look Forward To
The Center's Advent Calendar of LDS Literature
This December, the Advent Calendar travels further than ever.
Open a door and you might land in Zarahemla on the night Samuel’s prophecy comes due, in a Wasatch mining camp buried by avalanche on Christmas Eve, or in a Swedish fishing village where a sick girl’s only wish is to see the king.
One morning brings a frontier mother in 1870s southern Utah staring at an empty stocking; the next, a book thief prowling a pharmacy at 1:42 a.m.
Stories first printed in the Woman’s Exponent, Juvenile Instructor, and Improvement Era sit beside contemporary work never published anywhere, alongside a tale from Argentina that links Santa’s workshop to the World Cup, a German novel shadowed by the 1930s, an autobiographical story of childhood in Togo, and a graphic novel in which Jared and his brother hunt saber-toothed tigers and stumble onto fire.
Some will make you laugh out loud. Some, like a nine-year-old’s June night when only the moon stays the same, will break your heart.
Prophets and giants, new souls and stubborn grandmothers, a sun that rises in the west: a new door opens every day until Christmas. Come see what’s behind it (Free, sign up for alerts when the first stories release).
FICTION & POETRY
A Bad Deal in Mormon Land
T.I.M. Wirkus
It's 1908, and spirit medium Madame Ilsa von Hoffmann is out of options. Rather than join a doomed commune of fellow trans ex-vaudevillians, she takes a lucrative job in Salt Lake City from a religious extremist who wants her to summon the ghost of Joseph Smith to bless his fledgling offshoot church. Add an East Coast journalist with a hidden agenda, a volatile henchman, a relentlessly orthodox apostle, a rogue third wife, a vengeful private investigator, and an accumulating pile of bodies, and Ilsa's priority shifts from saving her career to getting out of Utah alive. A wry, twisty historical mystery. (Type Eighteen Books, $9.99, Kindle, 329 pp.
Ender’s Tribe
Orson Scott Card
It began with a short story. Ender's Tribe collects the original "Ender's Game" along with seven more tales from across the Ender Universe, featuring Mazer Rackham, Peter Wiggin, Han Tzu, and of course Ender himself. Bookending a saga that became a global phenomenon, it's essential for longtime fans and an ideal entry point for new ones. (Blackstone Publishing, $29.99, hardcover, 304 pp.)
The Fires of December
Brandon Sanderson
Born in the last cold hour of the last cold day of the last cold month, an orphan named December grows up in a land sustained by rivers of colorful demon blood. When she learns a plague is coming that will curdle the rivers and ravage the kingdom, she sails upriver to warn a royal court that has no reason to believe her, with a chatty priestess, a fledgling fashion designer, and a roguish count along the way. A standalone Cosmere novel from Brandon Sanderson, with illustrations by Tran Nguyen. (Dragonsteel, $10, ebook)
Loved Ones
Kevin Klein
Chapel cleaning, youth soccer, midwinter pruning, the middle-school band concert: Kevin Klein finds the sacred in exactly the places most of us spend our weeks. Arranged around the virtues of faith, hope, charity, and love, these forty poems are reverent and playful by turns, rooted in scripture and alive with disarming warmth. A gentle reminder that the divine is found not only in miracles but in the people who teach us to believe and endure. (Greg Kofford Books, $9.95, softcover, 94 pp.)
Necronauts
Ryan Habermeyer
Welcome to Calypsee, Utah, a fundamentalist town whose patron saint is Ronald Reagan and whose motto is "In Armageddon We Trust." Among its misfits and prophets lives a boy in a cosmonaut helmet (or possibly an old fishbowl) who longs to launch himself into space. Told through ninety-five newspaper obituaries and interspersed with vernacular photographs, Ryan Habermeyer's novel is a loosely reimagined Pinocchio, an ode to campy sci-fi, and a sharp satire of 1980s Americana, by turns whimsical and savage. For the reader who likes their fiction strange. (Still House Press, $20, softcover, 322 pp.)
Neither Fear Ye Their Fear
Stephen Dethloff
Readers of Isaiah know the line "Neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid." Stephen Dethloff's historical novel takes us to Jerusalem in 734 BC, when that counsel was first given, and to young Prince Ahaz, caught between joining a regional alliance and bowing to the rising power of Assyria. Palace intrigue, ancient ritual, and the brutal realities of Iron Age warfare come to gritty life, and the maps, chapter notes, and bibliography make it a rewarding companion to Old Testament study. A tragedy about a man who tries to save his kingdom and risks his soul. (Good Shapes Press, $18.99, softcover, 314 pp.)
Sacred Scar
Scott Hales
Scott Hales, beloved for his Garden of Enid comics and his work as a Church historian, turns to poetry with a storyteller's eye and a historian's care. These poems move from ancient deserts to modern suburbs, from battlefield soil to baptismal fonts, drawing on saints, pioneers, ancestors, and his own family to show how holiness can emerge from grief, doubt, curiosity, and humor. A meditation on belief: how it breaks, heals, and returns. (Greg Kofford Books, $9.95, softcover, 94 pp.)
Some Hard Stars
David Thacker
David Thacker's poems sing and think out loud, sometimes in traditional forms and meters, sometimes in music invented for the moment. Some Hard Stars knits past and present together in search of love, rebirth, and sustaining joy, with deep tenderness for family, neighbors, and friends. Thacker is exacting in his questions and careful in his laments, reminding us that "love requires / a willing mind." (Signature Books, $16.95, softcover, 103 pp.)
The Sun Has Shifted As Have I
Jonathan T. Bailey
Jonathan T. Bailey is a photographer and writer of the American West, and his poems carry the desert in them: the buzz of cicadas, the song of the hermit thrush, a landscape that holds desolation and renewal at once. This collection maps a personal transformation through longing, belonging, and self-discovery, refusing to separate pain from beauty or vulnerability from strength. These are poems that prefer honesty to closure. (Torrey House Press, $16.95, softcover, 74 pp.)
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
The Curse of the Lost Cave
Stephanie Bearce
It's Outlaw Days in Sassafras Springs, and the whole town has treasure fever. When a mysterious book turns up at an archaeological dig, Raven Gallows and her fellow Truth Trackers set out after the legendary hidden loot of outlaw Alf Bolin, only to find a shadowy corporation, rival hunters, and maybe Raven's own mother on the same trail. Riddles, betrayal, and a final test of courage in a lost cave make for a page-turning middle-grade mystery with real questions about honesty and preserving history. (Shadow Mountain, $19.99, hardcover, 224 pp.)
Enough Elizabeths
Heather Harris Bergevin, Lexi Hall
Elizabeth is a princess in a tower, which is a great honor in her kingdom, except for one embarrassing secret: she's afraid of heights. When a moody dragon moves into her suspiciously tidy bedroom, monarchs, palace officials, a determined prime minister, and a reluctant knight all tumble over one another trying to negotiate. Is it a princess-napping if the dragon only wanted a nap? A giggle-worthy picture book that rewards reading aloud. (Lucky Rabbit Publishing, $19.99, hardcover, 32 pp.)
Expressions of Jesus, Children’s Edition: Cultural Representations of the Savior of the World
Rose Datoc Dall
In this children's edition of Expressions of Jesus, twenty-two artists from ten countries paint the Savior as he might look in their own communities: Indian, Cambodian, Mexican, Ethiopian, Navajo, Chinese. Paired with scriptures, the paintings tell the story of Christ's life from his baptism to his resurrection and promised return. The message for young readers is simple and lovely: no matter what Jesus looks like, he loves everyone, everywhere. (Shadow Mountain, $19.99, hardcover, 48 pp.)
Fablehaven: The Illustrated Edition, Vol. 1
Brandon Mull, Brandon Dorman
Twenty years after Kendra and Seth first discovered their grandfather's secret preserve for magical creatures, Fablehaven returns in an oversized anniversary edition with one hundred new color illustrations by Brandon Dorman. Watch the yard bloom from monochrome to a full-color garden of fairies, see Hugo the golem hurl pumpkins across the page, and linger over a battle painting worth framing. Perfect for introducing the series to a new reader, or for the longtime fan who has already worn out a paperback copy. (Shadow Mountain, $39.99, hardcover, 272 pp.)
Holidays at the Castle (Tuesdays at the Castle)
Jessica Day George
Fans of the Tuesdays at the Castle series know that Castle Glower has a mind of its own, and the holidays are no exception. Celie is finally home for winter, ready for feasts, decorations, and magical displays with her family and the visiting royals of Grath. Then the griffins start misbehaving, a blizzard rolls in, and celebration looks less and less likely. A cozy, funny seasonal adventure from a New York Times bestselling author, with holiday crafts and a recipe tucked in the back. (Bloomsbury Children's Books, $10.99, softcover, 144 pp.)
Ireantum 23.4 Back to School 2026
Various children
For its Back to School 2026 issue, Irreantum handed the pages over to the next generation. KIDS is the journal's first issue by, for, and about children: eleven works of writing, poetry, and drawings, mostly by teenagers, with a few younger contributors. Consider it an early look at Latter-day Saint voices we hope to hear from for decades to come, and a lovely thing to share with the young writer in your family. (Irreantum, free, digital)
Nando
McCall Hoyle
Nando began life as the runt of the litter and grew into a border collie who believes he must be perfect to keep his place on the farm. Then a tropical storm turns the creek into a raging river, scattering the farm's children and animals, and Nando is swept far from home. Rescued by Levi, a boy also displaced by the storm, he learns on their long journey back that he doesn't have to be perfect to be loved. For readers who cherished Because of Winn-Dixie and Homeward Bound. (Shadow Mountain, $18.99, hardcover, 176 pp.)
Wish on a Willow
Maria Oka
Eleven-year-old Eloise is spending the summer at her grandfather's farm while her dad recovers from a terrible bike accident. In the attic she finds her father's childhood journal, which claims that Mama Willow, the enormous weeping willow on the property, holds real magic. Eloise isn't sure she believes it until she sees it for herself, just as a slick developer announces plans to cut the tree down. A tender middle-grade story about fear, hope, and the wishes too big to let go. (Shadow Mountain, $19.99, hardcover, 256 pp.)
NONFICTION
After Happiness: Living with Faith in a Time of Crisis
Natalie Brown
Many Latter-day Saints grow up with an unspoken equation that righteousness leads to happiness, stability, and prosperity. What happens when life doesn't follow the script? Drawing on personal experience, scripture, and cultural analysis, Natalie Brown sets aside easy formulas in favor of something sturdier, a faith that makes room for mourning, courage, adaptation, and trust in God amid upheaval. Honest and emotionally resonant, it's a gift for anyone who is quietly carrying a hard year. (Greg Kofford Books, $19.95, softcover, 170 pp.)
Dear Missionary: The Letter I Wish I'd Had
Jason F. Wright
Jason F. Wright entered the MTC in 1990 bound for Brazil, three years after his father's death, without the letter parents traditionally tuck into a departing missionary's suitcase. He has spent thirty years writing it in his head, and here it is at last, addressed to one missionary at a time. Drawing on his own mission, on sending two children into the field, and on his service as a young single adult branch president, Wright walks through the whole arc, from the first baffling lesson to the day the badge comes off. Each chapter is anchored in scripture and ends with a Preach My Gospel prompt. For missionaries, and for the parents who will read it twice. (InkVeins, $9.95, softcover, 110 pp.)
The Diaries of Carol Lynn Pearson--Mormon Author, Feminist, and Activist: Volume 3: 2003-2014
Carol Lynn Pearson
Poet, playwright, and author of Goodbye, I Love You, Carol Lynn Pearson has kept a diary for decades, and the third volume covers some of the most turbulent years in recent Church history. California's Proposition 8 looms large, along with the rifts it opened in congregations, families, and friendships. Pearson also chronicles the Ordain Women movement and her growing engagement with the doctrine of eternal polygamy, which became the subject of her next book. Throughout, she takes phone calls, answers letters, and comforts those who are hurting. A candid, first-person record of an era from one of its most recognizable voices. (Signature Books, $29.95, softcover, 421 pp.)
The Great American Table: A Culinary Journey from Coast to Coast Celebrating All Fifty States
Michelle Wright
Timed for the nation's 250th birthday, Michelle Wright's cookbook takes a delicious road trip from the rocky shores of Maine to the red deserts of Utah to the islands of the Pacific. More than 150 recipes, at least one from every state plus a sampling from the U.S. territories, celebrate the regional classics that define American communities, along with festive spreads for Thanksgiving and game day. Full-color photography and an elegant design make it as much at home on the coffee table as on the counter. (Shadow Mountain, $34.99, hardcover, 288 pp.)
Greg Olsen: The Complete Paintings
Greg Olsen
For many Latter-day Saint households, a Greg Olsen painting is as familiar as the family photos on the wall. For the first time, the artist has gathered his complete body of work, more than three hundred pieces spanning fifty years, from earliest drawings to iconic images like O Jerusalem and Gentle Healer. Decade-by-decade chapters, behind-the-scenes looks at his studio process, and never-before-seen sketches and studies reveal the faith, family, and mentors that shaped one of our most widely recognized Christian painters. A coffee-table book in the truest sense, without the coffee. (Shadow Mountain, $55, hardcover, 272 pp.)
Homestyle Heritage: A Collection of Our Most-loved Recipes
Six Sisters' Stuff
For more than fifteen years, the Six Sisters have been feeding families who need dinner on the table tonight. This lay-flat keepsake gathers their most-requested recipes, from weeknight standbys like Tuscan Pasta to holiday showstoppers like Gooey Caramel Chocolate Cake, along with the tips and cozy introductions that make their cooking feel like a family affair. Practically guaranteed to end up splattered, which is the highest compliment a cookbook can receive. (Shadow Mountain, $35.99, hardcover, 352 pp.)
Lest We Forget 9/11: Memoirs of a Civilian First Responder
Shaun Parry
On September 11, 2001, Broadway performer Shaun Parry woke up expecting an ordinary Tuesday in New York. Within hours he was making his way to Ground Zero, where he spent the next week as one of the few civilian volunteers admitted to the rescue effort, helping set up one of the first temporary morgues and searching the rubble for survivors. Drawn from journals written in the days after the attacks and deepened by twenty-five years of reflection, his memoir speaks honestly about grief, survivor's guilt, and post-traumatic stress, and also about the remarkable unity that followed. For a generation that knows that day only from textbooks, it is an essential first-hand account, published on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. (Independently published, $9.99, softcover, 303 pp.)
A Magical Christmas Collection
Dan Burr
Award-winning illustrator Dan Burr paints in a warm, nostalgic, Rockwell-inspired style, and this heirloom volume brings five beloved holiday stories by five different authors together under his brush. Candlelit rooms, snowy streets, and the hush of Christmas morning fill its pages, all in service of the season's quieter miracles: generosity, gratitude, and hearts turned toward others. A read-aloud tradition waiting to happen. (Shadow Mountain, $39.99, hardcover, 176 pp.)
Picturing Christ: Understanding Depictions of Jesus in History and Art
Various
What did Jesus look like? Three professors of ancient scripture, joined by art historian Jennifer Champoux (whose C. C. A. Christensen biography also appears in this guide), take up a question that turns out to matter more than we might think, since how we picture the Savior shapes how we relate to him, to ourselves, and to one another. The book surveys what archaeology can tell us and then walks through centuries of Christian art, including Latter-day Saint art, to help readers see Christ in new and transformative ways. A thoughtful pairing for anyone who loves sacred art. (Deseret Book, $22.79, hardcover, 168 pp.)
The Salt Lake Temple: Forty Years in Granite
A. Howard North
As people from around the world gather in Salt Lake City to celebrate the rededication of the temple, this book helps with the beloved building's history. Before a single permanent building stood in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young marked the spot where a temple would rise. A. Howard North tells the forty-year story that followed, drawing on diaries, newspapers, and Church records to bring forward the quarry workers of Little Cottonwood Canyon, the teamsters who hauled granite across punishing terrain, the craftsmen who shaped the interior, and the generations of pioneers who gave labor and money to a building many never lived to see finished. A construction story that turns out to be a story about faith under pressure. (Independently published, $14.95, softcover, 259 pp.)
The Salt Lake Temple: Questions and Answers
Susan Easton Black
Why did the Salt Lake Temple take forty years to build? What obstacles held it up? How did the Saints keep going? Veteran Church historian Susan Easton Black answers these questions and many more, tracing the temple's story from the day Brigham Young first gazed on the valley to President Russell M. Nelson's explanation of its recent renovation. The question-and-answer format makes this an easy book to dip into, whether you have one question or forty years' worth. (Cedar Fort, $15.99, softcover, 192 pp.)
Tom Cruise: A Life
Jeff Benedict
Jeff Benedict, the #1 New York Times bestselling biographer of Tiger Woods, turns to the most intensely private superstar in Hollywood. Starting with genealogical records and court documents in Kentucky, where Thomas Cruise Mapother IV grew up estranged from his father, Benedict draws on hundreds of interviews to follow the boy who went looking for acceptance in show business and became the world's most bankable actor. Marriages, Mission: Impossible, Scientology, and the solitude behind the fame are all here in a portrait that is vivid and unflinching. It publishes February 23, 2027, so pre-order now and give the promise of a late-winter treat. (Simon & Schuster, $35, hardcover, 576 pp., publication date February 23, 2027)
SCHOLARSHIP
C. C. A. Christensen: A Mormon Visionary
Jennifer Champoux
If you grew up with images of Book of Mormon battles and pioneer handcart companies, chances are you have C. C. A. Christensen to thank. In this smart biography, art historian Jennifer Champoux draws on the Danish-born painter's voluminous writings to illuminate his famous panoramas, a handful of recently rediscovered works, and the Church commissions that helped Latter-day Saints picture their own history. Eclipsed for decades by other artists, Christensen is enjoying a twenty-first-century revival, and Champoux makes the case that he was also one of the shrewdest chroniclers of how the faith and its culture evolved in Utah. (University of Illinois Press, $17.95 softcover/$110 hardcover, 152 pp., Introductions to Mormon Thought series)
Creature: The Life and Loves of May Swenson
Stephen Carter
In the summer of 1936, a twenty-three-year-old from Logan, Utah, boarded an eastbound bus with one goal: to become a poet in New York City. She did. May Swenson became one of mid-century America's most beloved poets, and Stephen Carter's artfully written biography follows her through Depression-era struggle, romantic relationships with both men and women, and decades of honing her craft. Carter also asks how her extraordinary way of seeing the world connects to her Mormon roots. A natural pairing with a volume of her poems. (Signature Books, $21.95, softcover, 150 pp.)
The Deseret Alphabet: A Fixed and Unalterable Sound
Ryan K. Shosted and N. E. Davis
Facing starvation on the Utah frontier, the pioneers nevertheless found time to create a new language. Ryan K. Shosted and N. E. Davis tell the story of the Deseret Alphabet, from its roots in the linguistic visions of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to its decline and surprising modern revival, drawing on previously unpublished archival material along the way. It's a book about theology, language, and identity, and about a people convinced that words themselves carry divine potential. (University of Illinois Press, $25 softcover/$125 hardcover, 298 pp.)
Duane Jeffery: A Mormon Evolutionist
Steven L. Peck
Who better to tell this story of an unsung evolutionary thinker at BYU than Steven L. Peck, himself a BYU evolutionary biologist and novelist? Peck follows geneticist Duane Jeffery from a rural upbringing through a career spent patiently making room for evolution in BYU classrooms, often against strong official disfavor. Jeffery's weapons were honesty, curiosity, and a years-long campaign of correcting misinformation, and his mentorship shaped generations of scientists who believe faith and evidence can share a table. An overdue look at a singular figure. (University of Illinois Press, $17.95 softcover/$110 hardcover, 136 pp., Introductions to Mormon Thought series)
Latter-day Eloquence: Two Centuries of Mormon Oratory
Edited by Richard Benjamin Crosby and Isaac James Richards
Latter-day Saints have always been a people of the pulpit, from frontier sermons to general conference. Latter-day Eloquence gathers two centuries of speeches from a remarkably broad range of voices, each introduced by an expert who places it in its historical moment. The cumulative effect quietly dismantles the notion that Latter-day Saints speak in a single voice. A one-of-a-kind reference for anyone interested in rhetoric, history, or simply a good speech. (University of Illinois Press, $45 softcover/$135 hardcover, 674 pp.)
Living Oracles: Law and the Latter-day Saint Tradition
Nathan B. Oman
No American religion has had a more tangled relationship with the law than Mormonism. Law professor Nathan B. Oman maps it all: the legal battles over polygamy, the rise and fall of Church courts, the idea of a "divinely inspired constitution," and how Latter-day Saint theology thinks about divine law, natural law, obligation, freedom, and equality. Oman moves from property and contract to divorce, race, and same-sex marriage with real sophistication. For the lawyer, history buff, or civic-minded reader on your list. (Oxford University Press, $49.99, hardcover, 328 pp.)
Richard Lyman Bushman: A Mormon Ambassador
J. B. Haws
Few scholars have done more to shape how both insiders and outsiders understand Latter-day Saint history than Richard Lyman Bushman. J. B. Haws traces the life and thought of the historian who stood with one foot in the academy and the other in the Church, translating his faith for the wider world while urging fellow members toward an honest, transparent approach to their own past. A perceptive portrait of a bridge-builder, and a welcome gift for anyone who has Rough Stone Rolling on their bookshelf. (University of Illinois Press, $17.95 softcover/$110 hardcover, 157 pp., Introductions to Mormon Thought series)
Unlocking the Chinese Realm: Apostle David O. McKay and Latter-day Saint Encounters in East Asia, 1852-1921
Reid L. Neilson
In 1921, Apostle David O. McKay stood in Peking and offered a prayer dedicating China for the preaching of the gospel. Historian Reid L. Neilson places that moment within seventy years of Latter-day Saint aspiration toward East Asia, beginning with Brigham Young's 1852 call for missionaries to Hong Kong and including early contact with Chinese migrants in Hawaii and California. Built on diaries, reports, and rare archival sources, it is a deeply researched look at the Church's global imagination and the hopes that echoed for generations afterward. (Greg Kofford Books, $25.95, softcover, 250 pp.)
Welding Another Link: Latter-day Saint Essays on Faith and Intellect
Nathan B. Oman
Taking his title from Orson F. Whitney's charge to keep "welding another link in wonder's chain," Nathan B. Oman makes a gentle but persistent plea that Latter-day Saint intellectual life be grounded in delight rather than alienation. These essays range across scripture, religious authority, Zion, pluralism, and the pressures of modernity, acknowledging hard questions without losing sight of what Oman calls the Restoration's divine core. Generous, hopeful, and thoughtful, it models the life of the mind as an act of devotion. (Greg Kofford Books, $19.99, softcover, 130 pp.)