Casey Paul Griffiths, Susan Easton Black, and Mary Jane Woodger, What You Don’t Know about the 100 Most Important Events in Church History. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017. Illustrations. Bibliography. Paper. ISBN: 978-1-62972-246-7. $22.99 (this morning on Amazon).

“[O]n October 10, 1880 … [d]uring general conference, President George Q. Cannon declared, ‘I hold in my hand the book of Doctrine and Covenants and also the book The Pearl of Great Price, which books contain revelations of God … As there have been additions made to it … it has been deemed wise to submit these books with their contents to the Conference, to see whether the Conference will vote to accept the books and their contents as from God, and binding upon us as a people and as a Church.’ President Joseph F. Smith added: ‘I move that we receive and accept the revelations contained in these books, as revelations from God to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and to all the world.’ The motion was seconded and sustained by unanimous vote of the whole conference.”

With that, the Pearl of Great Price became formally what it had been long less formally accepted as being: Scripture, as much as the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the revelations recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants.

But where did this volume of scripture come from? You have a general idea of the development of the Bible. The translation and publication of the Book of Mormon is a staple of missionary discussions, Primary songs, Seminary, and Gospel Doctrine classes. Discussion of the context of many sections of the Doctrine and Covenants are basic to Church history courses. But what about the Pearl of Great Price? You’ve heard its account of Joseph Smith’s early history from your earliest days as a Church member, and probably know something of the origin of the Book of Abraham – but how did those two books, of such different style and from such different eras, come to be bound together with other disparate texts to become scripture?

I’m not going to tell you, at least not in the post. But you can read something about it in the recent book by Casey Paul Griffiths and his collaborators, What You Don’t Know about the 100 Most Important Events in Church History.

There are two reasons why I don’t like that title – I even turned down the first invitation to accept a copy in exchange for a review because I so very, very much didn’t like the title. First, my ego tells me that yes, I probably do know something about most or all of any list of significant events from Church history, so don’t insult me by claiming I don’t know them – and anyway, presumably after reading, anything in any book with a title that claims something is forgotten or unknown or untold is remembered, known, and told, so the title becomes invalid. Second, any compilation with an arbitrary number of significant facts, people, or events is going to be uneven: Some of the items will be significant, but chances are good that some of the items were added simply to pad the list to reach the arbitrary number. So I really, really do not like the title, either when I first heard it, or now after reading the book. [/rant]

But … I am forced to admit that, for once, despite the awfulness of the title … there is some truth in this case. There were things – including the development of the Pearl of Great Price – that I did not know, or at least did not understand in as full detail as I learned from reading a chapter in 100 Most Important Events.

Most of the events are familiar and would appear on anyone’s list – the First Vision, the Restoration of the Priesthood (two chapters, one focusing on each priesthood), the Martyrdom, the Revelation on Priesthood and Official Declaration 2.

Other entries are debatable – which is part of the fun of any list. That is, would I (or you) include the 1979 New Editions of the Scriptures as one of the 100 most significant events? (My answer: Probably not. Huge pieces of the study apparatus – the Topical Guide itself, and all those TG footnotes, and a Bible Dictionary that excludes Lydia but includes scores of entries of obscure and unnecessary-to-devotional-study ancient political parties – have turned out to be less useful than anticipated; I am old enough that the new editions were my missionary scriptures, but in all these years I haven’t noticed any particular flowering of scripture scholarship in my wards.) Likewise, while they are interesting stories, I probably wouldn’t include Heber J. Grant’s Mission to Japan as a significant event (possibly I would include the opening of Japan and the Far East, but not Heber J. Grant’s role in it as he himself accomplished virtually nothing there); and I’m sure I wouldn’t include the adoption of the Boy Scout program, or the Equal Rights Amendment and the Church, in my list of most significant events. But enough of these 100 events would be on my list, and no doubt on yours, that there is no feeling of the list having been padded. These are important events, and debating a few chapters on the fringes of significance is part of the fun of thinking through a list like this.

Each chapter is about three pages long (once in a while slightly longer), sources are cited, and the book is heavily illustrated with well chosen black and white images. In most chapters, and especially on spreads without other illustrations, there are “Did You Know?” sidebars with the kind of facts that would make good questions in a Mormon trivia game – the names and numbers and details that fascinate a history buff, but which would clutter the reading if they were incorporated into the text itself. The authors have done an especially good job of separating the trivial from the essential in this way.

Events are arranged chronologically, so the table of contents makes a fine timeline to the broad history of the Church. Scanning that timeline, I note that two thirds of the events took place in the 19th century. “Firsts,” like those of the first 70 years of the Church, are always going to assume significance; but the Church has changed so much since the beginning of the 20th century – might it not be worthwhile to think carefully about what more recent events have shaped the Church as we know it today, as distinct from the events that are familiar from history but which are practically unrelated to today’s experience as a Church member?

Readers of this blog must know by now how important to Church history I think it is that we include the stories of Latter-day Saints beyond the well-trod path of New York to Kirtland to Missouri to Nauvoo to Utah, and that we include the authentic voices of Saints in other countries. There are a few chapters here that acknowledge the Church beyond the borders of the United States, but they are all stories of Americans abroad as missionaries – as noted, Heber J. Grant’s opening of Japan, but not the Church in Japan; the settlement of Anglos in Mexico and Canada, but no reference to the native Church in either place; David O. McKay’s worldwide tour in 1921, and the 1961 mission of A. Theodore Tuttle to South America (using his story as representative of then-new expansion of appointing a proto-Area President over a group of missions, just as the European Mission President had long exercised a supervisory capacity over the several missions there) are present, but again, the chapters are told from the point of view of the visiting American leader, without a sense of the Church as a local presence in any of these areas.

It’s easy – especially in a “list” book – to point to ways I might have done things differently, and I don’t want my playing with those ideas to overshadow this: I find What You don’t Know about the 100 Most Important Events in Church History to be a fascinating, well done, and worthwhile book, especially for Keepapitchinin’s audience. In a way, it feels like a compilation of 100 blog posts – short, punchy, stand-alone, and thought provoking. It cannot hope to make the same splash as a new volume of the Joseph Smith Papers, or At the Pulpit or other books that break new ground. Paradoxically, a book like this one has a good chance, though, of finding an even wider audience than a significant new monograph, because it is readable by a much broader audience. I predict its staying power, too – you could well find yourself, or your children, picking up this book again in a couple of years to review your memory of these significant events. For that reason, I wish Deseret Book would use better materials for printing and binding such books as this: a book that will receive the handling this one is likely to get for years to come deserves brighter paper, better photo reproduction, and a sturdier cover than this one got.

But as far as the text goes – and despite (even because of) the possible debate over whether some topic really belongs here, or whether some omitted topic would be better – this is a surprisingly good, well written, well organized, and valuable addition to the family bookshelf.

Note: I did receive a free copy of this book in exchange for posting a review. In this case, I frankly told the publisher’s representative that I hated the title, and he pressed me a second time to take the book, regardless of whether my review was favorable or not.