Authorship of the History of Brigham Young : A Review Essay
BYU Studies
Summer 1982
22
1982
367-74
"In this pointed review, Howard Seale leaves Leland Nelson with no justification for his inaccurate and misleading "journal" of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Nelson has compiled an interesting narrative of first person passages from the history of the church in an attempt to expand the familiar Joseph Smith story into an entire volume. In doing this he has included a great deal of material that was not authored by Joseph Smith at all. In spite of this fact, he claims on that this book is a true and accurate personal journal of Joseph Smith. Mr. Nelson admits that Joseph dictated most of his journal entries to scribes, but the implications of this practice are totally ignored in the identification and description of the books contents." [Publisher's abstract]