Title
|
Author
|
Brief description
|
| The Divine Comedy |
Alighieri D |
Dante’s classic recreation of the depths and heights of human experience, beginning in the first year of the 12th century. |
| The Story of Latter-Day Saints |
Allen J and Leonard G |
A candid and historically accurate history of the LDS faith through 1975 |
| Meditations |
Aurelius M |
The philosopher and Roman emperor describes his insights as he struggled to understand himself and to make sense of the universe. |
| Religion in an Age of Science |
Barbour IG |
A comprehensive examination of the major conflicts between science and religion in today’s world. |
| Servants of the Map |
Barrett A |
A collection of short stories ranging across 2 centuries from western Himalaya to an Adirondack village. |
| Ship Fever: Stories |
Barrett A |
A 1996 National Book Award-winning collection of short stories about the love of science and the science of love in the 19th century. |
| Confessions of a Mormon Historian: The Diaries of Leonard Arrington, 1971-1999 |
Bergera GJ |
An account of the first LDS Church Historian’s ten-year stormy tenure, full of controversy. |
| Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women |
Bessey S |
Through a thoughtful review of biblical teachings and church practices, one woman shares how following Jesus made a feminist out of her. |
| The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine |
Bly R |
A Jungian interpretation of a primordial folktale about the reunion of masculine and feminine. The Maiden King is a tale of an absent father, a possessive stepmother, a false tutor, and a young man overwhelmed by a beautiful maiden. |
| Mormon Women Speak: Collection of Essays |
Bradford M |
A collection of essays by Mormon women, in the style of the essay “Lusterware” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. |
| No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith |
Brodie FM |
A classic biography of Joseph Smith, written by David O. McKay’s niece, who was later excommunicated. The book eventually became a source for the church-sanctioned biography of Joseph Smith, Rough Stone Rolling by Bushman. |
| The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology |
Burke K |
Burke demonstrates how language and religion and language affect eachother. Religious systems are systems of action based on communication in society. |
| Dead White Guys: A Father, His Daughter and the Great Books of the Western World |
Burriesci M |
A father’s and daughter’s experience with reading 26 great books, from Plato to Karl Marx. |
| The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work |
Campbell J |
Campbell describes his monomyth, or “the one great story of mankind,” which he posits is the backbone of every story. |
| The Power of Myth |
Campbell J |
Campbell describes the mythology of heroes and applies it to recent history, such as the murder and funeral of John F Kennedy. |
| The Awakening |
Chopin K |
One of the first feminist novels ever written, in 1899, The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. |
| Why I am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto |
Crispin J |
A critique of modern feminism. |
| The Origin of Species |
Darwin C |
The classic volume in which Darwin explains his theory of natural selection and challenges orthodox thought and belief about creationism. |
| The Second Sex |
de Beauvoir S |
The classic volume of de Beauvoir’s groundbreaking observationsa bout the inequality and otherness of women. |
| The Red Tent |
Diamant A |
A novel about the biblical figure Dinah. Told in Dinah’s voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood. |
| All the Light We Cannot See |
Doerr A |
A blind French girl and a German boy struggle to survive the devastation of the war in occupied France. |
| Notes From the Underground |
Dostoyevsky FD |
(To be added) |
| The Story of Philosophy |
Durant W |
An account of the lives and ideas of the great philosophers, from Plato to Dewey. |
| The Name of the Rose |
Eco U |
In 12th-Century Italy, a Franciscan monk investigates bizarre deaths using the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, and the empirical insights of Roger Bacon. |
| How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee |
Ehrman, BD |
The claim that Jesus is God is not what the original disciples believed or what Jesus claimed. Ehrman explains how this belief came to be. |
| Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible and Why We Don’t Know About Them |
Ehrman, BD |
A compelling account of the central challenges faced when attempting to reconstruct Jesus’ life and message This book addresses the larger issue of what the New Testament actually teaches, and it’s not what you think. |
| Identity and the Life Cycle |
Erikson EH |
Erikson’s insights into the relationship of life history and history, beginning with observations on a central stage of life: identity development in adolescence. |
| The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook |
Ferguson N |
A brilliant recasting of the turning points in world history, including the one we’re living through, as a collision between old power hierarchies and new social networks. |
| Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation |
Fiorenza ES |
This book explores the ways in which women can read the Christian Bible with full understanding of both its oppressive and its liberating functions. |
| Man’s Search for Meaning |
Frankl VE |
Frankl’s memoir of his experience in Nazi death camps and lessons for spiritual survival, such as that we cannot avoid suffering, but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. |
| Grendel |
Gardner J |
Beowulf’s most terrifying monster tells his side of the story. |
| The Literary Message of Isaiah |
Gileadi A |
Gileadi suggests that the ancient writings of Isaiah bridge the gap between the Old and New Testaments. |
| The Language of the Goddess |
Gimbutas, M |
The goddess is the most potent and persistent feature in the archaeological records of the ancient world. In this volume the author resurrects the world of goddess-worshipping, earth-centered cultures, bringing ancient matriarchal society to life. |
| Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity |
Givens TL |
An account of the Mormon fath’s foundations in 19th-century restorationist thought and the subsequent influence of that foundation on the modern church. |
| Outliers: The Story of Success |
Gladwell M |
What makes high-achievers different? Gladwell says we can’t know by paying attention to what successful people are like; we have to pay attention to where they are from: Their cultures, families, generation, and idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringings. |
| The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference |
Gladwell M |
The tipping point is the magic moment when an idea, trend, or social bheavior crosses a threshold and spreads like wildfire. |
| The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion |
Haidt J |
As America descends deeper into polarization and paralysis, a social psychologist has done what seems impossible: challenged conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to everyone on the political spectrum. |
| Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin |
Hardy N |
In her memoir, Hardy describes the crossroads she encountered when she aged out of LDS YSA wards and came face-to-face with the discordance between the life she’d envisioned and the one she was living. |
| The Mormon Church & Blacks: A Documentary History |
Harris ML, Bringhurst NG |
Thirty official or authoritative Church statements on the status of African Americans in the Mormon Church and an analysis of how they reflect uniquely on Mormon characteristics in the context of history, race, and religion. |
| One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly: The Art of Seeking God |
Hoiland AM |
An exploration of the complexities of faith in everyday life, with a particular focus on the Mormon faith. |
| The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife |
Hollis J |
A book that uses Jungian analysis to show us how we may travel the Middle Passage consciously, thereby rendering our lives more meaningful and the second half of life immeasurably richer. |
| King Leopold’s Ghost |
Hothschild A |
A true story of the man who enslaved a nation and of those who fought him: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust. |
| The Varieties of Religious Experience |
James W |
William James’ classic text on religion, which he defines as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” |
| From Housewifwe to Heretic: One Woman’s Spiritual Awakening and her Exommunication from the Mormon Church |
Johnson S |
Awakening feminism brought Johnson into conflict with church leaders, who excommunicated her for promoting false doctrine. Her husband wanted to divorcer her because he was “tired of working on our marriage.” An account of Johnson’s progression from self-denial to activism. |
| The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric |
Joseph M |
An American nun explains the rules, definitions, and guidelines of language and the pathway to becoming a liberal artist. |
| Man and His Symbols |
Jung CG |
The first and only work in which the world-famous Swiss psycholotist explains to the layperson his enormously influential theory of symbolism as revealed in dreams |
| French Lessons |
Kaplan A |
Three Americans set off to explore Paris with a French tutor. As they traverse Paris’ grand boulevards and intimate, winding streets, they uncover surprising secrets about one another and come to understand long-buried truths about themselves. |
| In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin |
Larson, E |
A mild-mannered professor from Chicago brings his family to Germany in 1933. At first they are enamored of the New Germany. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, they become alarmed. The novel ends in a climax of violence and murder, revealing Hitler’s true character. |
| The Great Divorce |
Lewis CS |
An allegorical bus ride through heaven and hell that producees insights about the nature of good and evil. |
| Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny |
Manne K |
An exploration of misogyny in public life and poltics by a moral philosopher. |
| The Road |
McCarthy C |
A post apocalyptic novel about a father and son who walk alone through burned America observing the ravaged landscape and fighting to preserve the light they cherish. |
| Sexual Politics |
Millett K |
An expository view of patriarchy as a socially conditioned belief system masquerading as nature. |
| The Sociological Imagination |
Mills CW |
Mills calls for a way of looking at the world that can see links between the apparently private problems of the individual and important social issues. |
| King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine |
Moore RL |
A book of four Jungian archetypes about manhood, masculine energies from myth and literature |
| To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism |
Morozov E |
This book urges us to abandom monolithic ideas of “the Internet” and to show how to design more humane and democratic technological solutions. |
| Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History |
Prince GA |
A biography of the first and only professional historian to lead the Mormon church in its history division. |
| Becoming Human: A Servant of the Map |
Randall MM |
Essays about author’s journey to discover how to reshape his existence as a “servant of the map.” |
| At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women |
Reeder J and Holbrook K |
Hand-picked by Reeder and Holbrook, 54 speeches given by LDS women from 1831 to 2016. |
| Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness |
Reeve WP |
The 19th century Protestants’ view that Mormonism represented a racial departure from the mainstream, and the 200-year church response to fight that view. |
| The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book) |
Ruiz DM |
Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the agreements are “Be impeccable with your word,” “don’t take anything personally,” “don’t make assumptions,” and “always do your best.” |
| Confessions |
Saint Augustine |
A 4th century philosopher explains his theological and philosophical questioning of God’s nature and what it is to be human. |
| Exploring the Connection Between Mormons and Masons |
Scharffs GW |
Why did Joseph Smith become a Freemason? Who introduced Freemasonry into Nauvoo, Illinois, in the early 1840’s? Do the Masons really descend from the stonemasons who built King Solomon’s temple? Is there a relationship between the Masonic lodge rites and Mormon temple ordinances? |
| Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error |
Schulz K |
The editor of Grist magazine explores what it means to be wrong and why humans tend to assume and insist that they are right about almost everything. This book covers the history and psychology of error, from Socrates to Alan Greenspan. |
| The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods |
Sertillanges AG |
This classic by the 17th-18th century French Catholic philospher Sertillanges recommends habits of the mind for aspiring scholars. |
| The Mormon Mavericks: Essays on Dissenters |
Sillito J and Staker S |
Biographical essays from Mormon dissenters who were troubled by some aspects of church history, doctrine, policies, or politics. Some left and some stayed. |
| The Big Disconnect: The Story of Technology and Loneliness |
Slade G |
Using technology to replace face-to-face interactions is not a new phenomenon. The history of the phenomenon explains why we use technology to mediate our connections with other humans. |
| Mormon Midwife |
Smart D |
A 1997 Evans Handcart Prize-winner, the compliete diaries of Patty Sessions, details the early life of early Mormons from Illinois to Utah. |
| Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief |
Smith H |
The human spirit is being suffocated by the dominant materialistic worldview of our times. |
| Religion as Metaphor: Beyond Literal Belief |
Tacey D |
Despite what tradition tells us, if we “believe” religious language, we miss religion’s spiritual meaning. Religious language was not designed to be historical reporting, but rather to resonate in the soul and direct us toward transcendent realities. |
| The Darkening Spirit: Jung, Spirituality, Religion |
Tacey D |
Jung predicted the demise of secular humanism and claimed we would search for alternatives to science, atheism, and reason; he said we would experience a new and even unfashionable appetite for the sacred. |
| Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder |
Taleb NN |
One of the foremost philosophers of our time, Taleb’s book tells us about systems that benefit from disorder. A blueprint for how to behave — and thrive in — a world we don’t undersand and which is too uncertain for us to even try to understand. |
| A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 |
Ulrich LT |
The never-before-told story of the earliest days of the women of Mormon “plural marriage,” whose right to vote was given by a Mormon-dominated legislature as an outgrowth of polygamy. |
| Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History |
Ulrich LT |
A volume about women in history who achieved power and influence. |
| Bonds that Make Us Free |
Warner CT |
Why do we get trapped in negative emotions when it’s clear that life is so much fuller and richer when we are free of them? |
| The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? |
Warren R |
A non-Mormon Christian view of life’s meaning. |
| Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion |
Winell M |
Psychologist Winell outlines what people can do to reclaim a healthy human spirit after beginning to question literal belief. |
| Leaving My Father’s House: A Journey to Conscious Femininity |
Woodman M |
A book about the process required to bring feminine wisdom to consciousness in a patriarchal culture, a struggle presented by the personal journeys of three wise women whose lives can serve as maps. |
| The Evolution of God |
Wright R |
A sweeping view of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology that unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Spirituality has a role today, but science actually affirms the validity of the religious quest. |
