Product Description
The exotic temple culture of India comes alive through this beautifully illustrated die-cut model of a temple courtyard complete with altar and figures of Krishna, the cowherd boys and girls, and cows and monkeys. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

beautifully crafted activity set based on Indian legend
I awaited the arrival of the Vrindavan activity set with some trepidation.As a native of India, I am wary of well-meaning but misguidedinterpretations of Indian culture.However, this timeI was pleasantlysurprised.

The Vrindavan activity set consists of a stiff, fold-outtemple an altar,and several stand-up figures of maidens, trees, cattleand the Hindu god Krishna.The temple is flat-topped, which is not thetypical shape of Indian temples, but the artwork is intricate andbeautiful, a cross between traditional Indian and more modern styles.Children will enjoy playing with this set.

There is an informationsheet provided with the set about the various characters; however I don'tthink there is sufficient detail for people unfamiliar with Indian culture. This is a pity, because the story of Krishna's childhood adventures andantics in scenic Vrindavan, is one of the most enjoyable stories ever told. I recommend buying a good book to supplement the little informationprovided with the set. You might try Diksha Dalal-Clayton's The Adventuresof Young Krishna.

However even as it stands the Vrindavan activity setis a great deal of fun.Enjoy!

beautifully crafted activity set based on Indian legend
I bought this activity set for my 5-year-old daughter and awaited its arrival with some trepidation.As a native of India I am especiallysensitive to well-meaning but inaccurate renderings of Indian culture. However I was pleasantly surprised.The artwork was intricate andwonderful, a cross between traditional Indian styles and a more modernapproach, and the figures were charming.My daughter enjoys playing withthis set and I have also sent it to children of friends.

The VrindavanActivity set has a fold-out temple, altar, stand-up trees, maidens, cowsand figures of the Hindu god Krishna.It is beautifully illustrated andwell suited for small fingers.There is a page of explanations of thefigures and characters, which might not be sufficient for Western readersunfamiliar with the Krishna legend.This is a pity, because the legend ofKrishna as a young cowherd in scenic Vrindavan is one of the best and mostenjoyable stories ever told.A good book on the subject would supplementthe little information provided with the set.You might try "TheAdventures of Young Krishna" by Diksha Dalal-Clayton.

However,even as it stands, this activity set is a great deal of fun.Enjoy! ... Read more

Product Description
When Joseph and Emma Smith arrived in Ohio in 1831, several families offered them lodging, as did the Whitneys, whose five year-old daughter, Sarah Ann, and her eleven-year-old neighbor, Mary Elizabeth Rollins, would later play a role in Mormon polygamy. The Smiths soon moved in with the Johnsons, where Joseph met fifteen-year-old Marinda Nancy. In 1836, seven-year-old Helen Mar Kimball attended school near the Smith home. Each of these girls, whom Joseph met during the 1830s, would later marry him in the 1840s gathering place of Nauvoo, Illinois, on the east bank of the Mississippi River. In this thoroughly researched and documented work, the author shows how the prophet introduced single and married women to this new form of "celestial marrige"—a granted to the elect men of Nauvoo. Through their journals, letters, and affidavits, the participants tell their stories in intimate detail—before polygamy was forcibly abandoned and nearly forgotten. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Nauvoo Polygamy ... but we called it celestial marriage
This book is extremely well researched.I grew up on a diet of rumors about polygamy in the early days of the Mormon Church.This is the first time I have been able to locate the original sources of this information!What a treat! The author clarified the accounts that were written only by a second hand recorder

I was brought up in polygamy and am now a member of the Mormon Church.The information in the book has solidified my understanding of these confusing days and why polygamists keep living the life style.When my grandfather was sent to Mexico to marry his second wife in 1904 and then repudiated by the Church, I now understand.Why church leaders wouldn't cooperate with the Federal goverment during the late nineteenth century, why Joseph Smith chose to lie to his own wife and others about polygamy while teaching and living it in secret has helped me realize how deeply imbedded dishonest paradigms are in my own culture.

Emotional ties and an addiction to my tribe makes it difficult at my age to permanently move beyond those whom I love and share common values with.But I am grateful to know the truth.

It is good to realize that all religions have shady histories.Since Mormonism is comparitively new, resources about its early days are easier to find.

Moreover, these men were pedophiles
Why hasn't anyone mentioned this fact about Joseph Smith and his men? I'd like to see someone today try and pull the same stunts and make claims as he did. That person today would either be in prison or sent to the nut house and would have zero followers.

Letting Go of Polygamy While Letting Truth Stand:"Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater"
This is another good book for unveiling the puzzling mysteries of LDS polygamy.Because of the volumes of research over the past thirty-three years on this topic, I agree with George D. Smith:"Had they paid closer attention, history might have highlighted the risks of such social experiments."But now, "It can no longer be said that the events were equivocal, that questions remain about the general contours of what happened and who the participants were.In fact, ...readers can judge for themselves what happened and why" (jacket flyleaves).

I have two main reasons for recommending that serious students of this subject also include other works (Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy; Hardy, Solemn Covenant; Compton, In Sacred Loneliness; Donna Hill, Joseph Smith: The First Mormon; Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling; Arrington, Adventures of a Church Historian, etc.) which have come forth after the LDS archives became more accessible to scholars by the mid 70s.

1.George D. Smith briefly refers to Jacob 2:27, 30 as a "conditional proposition" that heaven might reinstate polygamy to "raise up seed" (p. 13-14).On page 29 he admits that, "Curiously enough, the revelation [Joseph Smith or D&C 132] did not invoke the Book of Mormon's justification for taking more wives."I find no evidence Joseph Smith (or even Brigham Young, at least not initially if ever) interpreted this BofM verse to mean what our folklore has come to teach us to extract from the words.The earliest reference I can find of this odd (but popularized) interpretation is from Orson Pratt's 7 October 1869 Conferenceaddress under pressure to defend and explain the practice before the world and our own internal discord (The Bible & Polygamy, 139).Kimball Young condemned this contorted interpretation as Pratt's willingness "to use the Book of Mormon as a defense of polygamy by rationalizing its opposition in a shrewd way" (Young, Isn't One Wife Enough? 41).Jacob 2:30 can not be justifying polygamy or announcing a "conditional proposition" for polygamy without contradicting earlier and later verses.The preposition "For" begins a sentence to introduce the same though reworded explanation for the preceding statement, NOT to offer an exception as other words might.In order for Him to "raise up seed unto me," He must be in command, "otherwise they [those who do not hearken to Him] shall hearken unto these things" (succumb to the "grosser crimes" and the "awful consequences" of the kinds of plurality and infidelity God warns against in this sermon.Earlier the same directive "to raise up seed unto the Lord" strictly meant one spouse (1 Ne. 7:1, 6; 16:7-8; Jacob 2:34, 3:5).Pratt's contorted interpretation that verse 30 offers a "conditional proposition" for polygamy also does violence to God's compliment to the Lamanites for their "more righteous" obedience to monogamy (Jacob 3:5-6).Whether we grammatically diagram the verse 30 sentence by itself or study it in careful context with Jacob's entire sermon (and in context with earlier and later BofM verses), Pratt's interpretation does not survive scrutiny.But decades of repetition as to how to extrapolate what we needed from those words has left us near unable to restore our minds to see the words in an opposite but congruous way.As Dr. Wayne Dyer warns:"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."Historian Leonard J. Arrington asked:"When did the crucial authorizing revelation occur?"His pen thunders the blunt answer:"There is no precise answer" (The Mormon Experience, 196).And respected scholars George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl, in search of evidence for Pratt's interpretation that Jacob 2:30 foretold a command from God to enact polygamy, publish this admission:"This we have reason to believe he did, though we find no direct statement on the matter" (Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 1 [1955], 461).By similarly scrutinizing D&C 132 (though not included here), our best scriptural basis for embracing polygamy indeed lingers as "the weakest link," and cautions us as to the dangers of imagination.So using Jacob 2:30 as a "conditional proposition" for polygamy has been shown to be deeply troubling and unsound.

2.In addition to scriptural contradictions and uncertainties, "there is some evidence in the decade preceding his demise that [Brigham] Young may have been waning in his support for polygamy as had Joseph Smith during the last year of his life" (Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 112).We have a solemn obligation to discern and follow the line upon line prophetic waning away from polygamy over and above any early succumbing to the practice.Nauvoo Polygamy makes only brief reference to the historical evidence that Joseph Smith attempted to eradicate the practice from his personal life and from the Church he had helped establish (Nauvoo stake president William Marks' testimony, p.p. 442-43, 536; and Emma's testimony to Coolidge, p. 343).Other works offer more witnesses and details (Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 11-12, 16, 57, 59, 72, 77; Newell and Avery, Mormon Enigma, 100, 179; Price, Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy, Vol. 1, 1-76, 107, 111-206, 219-29, 232-33; etc.).By 1977 Donna Hill saw enough historical records to declare:"...the later Utah Mormons often glorified polygamy beyond reality" (Joseph Smith: the First Mormon, 360)."Joseph had mentioned early in the history of the church that revelations sometimes came from God, sometimes from Satan and sometimes from man.It remained for the prophet [and for us] to differentiate, and mistakes might be recognized only later..." (Ibid., 344).Furthermore, "Later in his life there is evidence that he had occasional painful doubts about polygamy" (Ibid., 11).Hill solemnly admits:"Of Joseph Smith we can accept today what may be closer to fact than any theory so far advanced--that, of everything said both for and against him, a great deal on both sides was the truth" (Ibid., back jacket).Perhaps Joseph was "unlearned" in some proven basic religious truths as well as other things."Erastus Snow heard him [Joseph] say at the time [amidst polygamy developments], 'many of the Elders were doing things because they saw him [Joseph] do them, but many by this means would fall'" (Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 24).

Stephen Taysom coined the painful historical reality:"Before Smith could fully explore and develop all the theological implications of these new teachings, he and his brother Hyrum were murdered..." ("A Uniform and Common Recollection: Joseph Smith's Legacy, Polygamy, and the Creation of Mormon Public Memory, 1852-2002," Dialogue, v. 35, #3 [Fall 2002]: 119).Brigham Young similarly made a prophetic admission in 1866 which accentuates the tragedy that LDS polygamy came into the Church before questions, answers, revelations and adequate interpretations could thoroughly occur (I was pleased that George D. Smith at least used part of Young's quote on p. 549):"If it is wrong for a man to have more than one wife at a time, the Lord will reveal it by and by, and he will put it away that it will not be known in the Church.I did not ask Him for the revelation upon this subject.When that revelation [D&C 132] was first read to me by Joseph Smith, I plainly saw the great trials and the abuse of it that would be made by many of the Elders, and the trouble and persecution that it would bring upon this whole people.But the Lord revealed it, and it was my business to accept it" (JD 11:268).

As History continues to prove LDS polygamy to be "an embarrassing historical anomaly" (Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy,449), we need to be vigilant in remembering that the most painful truth will still give better results than the most comfortable and rewarding fiction--that is the nature and promise of truth (John 8:32).It is a common mortal awakening to discover that what we once thought came purely from God had more to do with the man in the mirror than the Man of Holiness.We need to be willing and ready to eradicate and wash from our minds, hearts, expectations and practices (individually and institutionally) beliefs we come to learn are not true.A thorough familiarity with what historical research has unveiled over the last 33 years on the subject of LDS polygamy can motivate us to do something about the sobering evidence that Elizabeth Smart is not the only modern victim of its remnants.

Nauvoo Polygamy does a good job showing that Joseph Smith became part of "an age-old discussion that can be seen as the confluence of two strains of thought:the attempt to adapt religion to human nature and, conversely, the attempt to conform human nature to accepted religious practice" (Ibid., xvi, 407-410).As the dust settles, there is ample evidence that Joseph (in several ways typical of his broad personality--"this tendency to mingle the old and new, the radical and traditional"--Bachman, "New Light on an Old Hypothesis," 27-28) chose to pursue both directions.Perhaps, at least in some areas, Joseph Smith left us with the burden to negotiate opposites and extremes rather than always leaving us with the answers.Christ foretold the necessity of this emerging process (Matt. 13:47-48).

Sensationalistic Tripe
George Smith wrote this book to convince his readers that early Mormon polygamy was all about sex.Smith cites all rumors that support his thesis and ignores any facts to the contrary.While this makes for an exciting book, one can hardly call it history.

The author cites other authors, but ignores their data and conclusions (see the more balanced scholarship of Richard Bushman and Todd Compton about the origins of Mormon polygamy).

[...]

Remarkable and Revealing
George Smith's Nauvoo Polygamy: "but we called it etc." is a remarkable and revealing book.The clues were in front of me all along, but it took Smith's writing to convince. My goodness. My dear Nauvoo. I'm humbled and amazed.

H. Leonard Porter, Ph.D. ... Read more

Product Description
The Biblcal story of the death of King David is a powerful drama of courtly intrigue (I Kings, ch.1,2). The Temple uses the characters and circumstances of the story as the basis for a romantic comedy. As King David lies dying, Abishag, a fair maiden, is brought into the palace to lie with him because "his body gave off no heat." David's two sons,Solomon and Adonijah are engaged in a bitter struggle to succeed to the throne of Israel. Abishac becomes involved and wins the love of Solomon and an honored place in the palace. This unusual play will delight the sophisticated reader. An additional feature is "The Life of King David in Context." ... Read more

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Volumes 1-8 in the Dragonlance: New Adventures Series. Published in 2004 and 2005. ... Read more

Product Description
nice four volume set Small blue hardcovers with gold gilting to top, Dent publishers these are 1924 printings ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

lovely pictures
Set in Stone: Fixed in Glass: The Great Mormon Temple and its Photographers does a really solid job showing us immaculate pictures of the history of certain structures created many years ago.Sometimes a book that focuses on beautiful and detailed pictures can tell us more about what we're seeing than words can, and this is a perfect example of that.Be completely amazed by the pictures throughout the book.

I LOVE IT!!!!!!
I love old photo-history books, and this is one of the best.It shows photographs of the Salt Lake Mormon Temple, taken by various photographers at different times during its construction.Many historic photos are contained here.Also, much of the history of Utah as a Territory can be learned by the photos and the text.

I gained a greater appreciation for the pioneers and their legacy, by reading this book.

--George Stancliffe ... Read more