Richard S. Van Wagoner's subtitle "A Portrait of Religious Excess" should immediately tell you the direction in which he's taking this book. Van Wagoner's goal is to justify the ill-treatment Rigdon has received at the hands of LDS Church historians, so he presents Rigdon as unstable and incapable of succeeding Joseph Smith, which in turn provides the justification for Brigham Young's questionable rise to power. In truth, Rigdon, as Smith's First Counselor, held the strongest claim to presidential succession, and his ouster from the church can only be justified through prevarication.

Still, that being said, Van Wagoner's book is still a useful and interesting source on early Mormon Church history. It doesn't succeed in supplanting F. Mark McKiernan's 1971 "The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness" as the definitive biography of Sidney Rigdon, but it is still a useful supplement.

There is no need to "psychoanalize" Sidney Rigdon. His own words are proof enough that he was far beyond any religious zealots you and I have encountered. If by "psychoanalysis" the TBM reviewer below meant that Van Wagoner quotes from Rigdon himself showing that Rigdon was a religious nutcase then yes there is some truth to that. Van Wagoner did an excellent job of letting Rigdon hang himself.

This is a marvelous treatise on the history of the LDS church that has been largely forgotten, overlooked, and in some cases, edited right out. Sidney Rigdon was without question one of the most significant forces shaping the early Church, yet because he fell out of favor with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles following the murder of Joseph Smith, his contributions have been airbrushed out of the collective Mormon consciousness. Van Wagoner goes a long way in correcting that error.

This book will not always be a comfortable read for active Mormons. As Van Wagoner reviews the life and ecentricities of Joseph's spokesman, so, too is there a hard review of the circumstances in which Rigdon lived, most notably his association with Joseph Smith and other prominent leaders of the LDS church. It is not difficult to conclude that both men were religious fanatics, though Joseph's life was cut short and his zeal and fanatiscm may not have had the chance to develop to its fullest, as did Rigdon's. Nevertheless, the parallels are striking, and the objective reader can't help but wonder how much of what Joseph said or did was because of his association with Sidney Rigdon, rather than his prophetic call.

Because Sidney left the faith (well, left the Brighamite faith...he was true to the Book of Mormon and everything Joseph Smith taught with the glaring exception of polygamy), the conventional history of the church has little to say about Rigdon. That, then, is the very reason why this book is such an important contribution to the library of any serious student of church history. Sidney's experience in the establishment of the church begins to deviate from the standard version during the Nauvoo years, and Van Wagoner's treatment of the battle to establish primacy in the leadership of the Church post-martyrdom is something every Mormon should read.

The fact that Van Wagoner ventures an educated and thoughtful guess as to the psychodynamics of Ridgon's mind is the subject of some criticism. I found his treatment of that issue to be fair, but more importantly, only incidental to the whole story. Van Wagoner could have left his oppinions completely unspoken, and when you were finished with the book, you, too, would conclude that "all was not well" in the mind and thinking of Sidney Rigdon. That tends to raise some important questions when you consider how significant he was in influencing Joseph Smith.

Above all, Sidney Rigdon was a brilliant man with a penchant for excess, particularly when it comes to his religious convictions regarding the imminent return of Jesus Christ, the destruction of the world, and the redemption of Zion (which turned out to be in a whole bunch of places in Sidney's world). The study of his life reveals the genesis of that thinking, and suggests that much of the millenialistic thought and zeal of the early Mormons may well have been driven by none other than Sidney Rigdon.

This is a book I will recommend to all my friends. Hold on to your hat, though, because it's quite a ride!

I found this book a presumtious, hypocritical waste of tree. I found his ideas to be heavily influenced by patriarchal society. This man should not be allowed to quote Tillich but since he did he should have at least done the man justice. His attempt to define the role of sexuality in these instances were meager. See Thomas Moore for an excellent look into sexuality and human relationships. Use this book for a coaster.

Wagoner has really shown us what love is in his book, THE MEANINGS OF LOVE. Through examination of six different views of love throughout time and thought -- ranging from Plato to Sartre -- he allows we readers to become more knowledgable on a subject close to our hearts, but never really know about in a scholarly way. For lovers young and old.

This is a helpful set of books if you need to know what the books are about or some insight on the story line. Don't expect too much deep literary criticism.

I found the paperback version interesting but at the same time a bit hard to understand fully. Without the cassetts with the correct pronunciation its hard follow this book. I have on the other hand been studiyng classic arabic for some time which have been helpful.Recordings are old and sometimes hard to fully hear the pronunciation.

This book is way out of date and contains misinformation. It is worse than useless.

I bought it here a few months ago and regret it.

While this book was the "breeder's Bible" when it was first published 25 years ago, the fact is that genetics, especially equine genetics, has progressed by leaps and bounds since then. Many things we thought to be true then are no longer so. I think this is a great book to have in your library; some things about it are timeless. However, if you're looking to answer specific genetic questions (For example, "How do I get an Overo?"), then you may end up with wrong information. Anyone using it to answer these questions would do well to double-check it with another, more recent textbook, such as "The Genetics of the Horse."

This book is a breeder's "bible" , and is one I would recommend for everyone, regardless of the size of the reader's breeding operation. The book gives readable and understandable information on the consequences of breeding individual animals for specific color and conformation traits. It provides valuable information on the dominance of specific traits and the likelihood of those traits being inherited by offspring.

This book by Dr. Joel Naumann, head of the composition department at the University of Wisconsin Madison is a great example of experimental electronic music of the late 60's and early 70's. It goes over academic electronic music techniques, but because of the rate at which teachnology has evolved, the author himself no longer uses the text. It is of some interest to someone seeking a historical basis in electronic music, but is not reccommended unless the reader has substantial basis of knowledge in the area so that it is clear what is correct information, and what has become incorrect because of changing technology.