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Podcast: In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Episode: Richard L. Bushman, "Joseph Smith's Gold Plates: A Cultural History" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Description: Renowned historian of Mormonism Richard Lyman Bushman's latest book presents a vibrant history of a sacred object that gave birth to a new religion: the gold plates Joseph Smith said he discovered in upstate New York in the 1820s. Believers hailed Smith as a revered prophet and translator of lost languages while critics warned the public he was a dangerous charlatan. Two hundred years later the mystery of the gold plates remains. In Joseph Smith's Gold Plates: A Cultural History (Oxford UP, 2023), Bushman offers a cultural history of the gold plates down through the years. How have they bee...