First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins

First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins by Harper, Steven C.. Hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780199329472.

This is the biography of a contested memory, how it was born, grew, changed the world, and was changed by it. Its the story of the story of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began. Steven C. Harper tell the story of how Latter-day Saints forgot and then remembered several accounts of Joseph Smiths experience of his first vision and how Smiths 1838 account was redacted and canonized. He explores the dissonance many saints experienced after discovering multiple accounts of Smiths experience. He describes how, for many, the dissonance has been resolved by a reshaped collective memory.