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Others on FR are clear experts in this area; many of them former LDS. I'm not. Unless I'm clearly writing from an academic point of view, with cites, I'm writing from memory and you should Google copiously and read many sources.

I'm fascinated in LDS/American history, and not particularly from a theological view. Mormonism is the distinctly American contribution to the religious spectrum. It was started, whether conveniently or not, during the time of printing presses, by men who liked to talk and write, surrounded by people who liked to write and to record the spoken word. And there is a lot of dramatic American history involved - the Missouri Wars and the Utah War (name another American religion involved historical incidental actually called capital "w" Wars, on the American soil, one involving the religion against the U.S. Army).

We're reaching an interesting point in LDS history, and not just because the original documents and the official www.lds.org site are available on the internet (that doesn't alway help - the LDS church puts it's youth educational material and the history it teaches its youth behind a portal that requires an authorized LDS password to view).

The Readers' Digest Version, because it didn't start with him, is that a LDS Apostle, Boyd K. Packer, delivered a speech entitled "The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than The Intellect," promoting (ordering) LDS Historians to write and teach "faithful" or "faith-promoting" history; that is, print only those parts of church history that show the church and its leaders in a good light and interpret all history to show the church is true and actions by the church and its leaders were right and justified. You can Google it.

This was later enforced with excommunication/dis-enfellowshipment of the September Six, and LDS members who write unfavorable history are still excommunicated as apostates and on other grounds, without regard to whether the history is true.

There's a counter-battle between journals such as Sunstone, and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, which don't stick to being faith-promoting, and the Maxwell Institute and FARMS at BYU, which are still touting archaeological evidence that a battle killing millions of people with steel weapons and armor - before steel existed - and with horses (before they were brought to the Americas) - and elephants and curlemons (I know, what's a curlemon?) - occurred around New York (or wherever The Hill Cumorrah keeps getting moved to).

Although LDS Ph.D authors like Michael Quinn were previously excommunicated for writing about polygamy after the 1890 Manifeso, or the impact of the practice of occult in the 1820s/1830s on the Book of Mormon (including 400 pages of footnotes, including receipts of books purchased by Joseph Smith's family) - we are getting books from LDS historians like Rough Stone Rolling (a Joseph Smith biography) and In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (the stories of some, if not all, of Joseph Smith's plural wives, based on their journals and letters, and those of their friends and families, and other intense research).

One issue is that the primary audience for those books are historians, some LDS historians, and non-LDS. LDS aren't going to read them. When Professor Todd Compton's Book (In Sacred Loneliness) receives a bad review in FARMS, FARMS will not publish his response and he has to use the internet to do so himself.

And so much of this is being written that the LDS church is not in position any longer to excommunicate all of these LDS writers. Yet the histories - heavily footnoted, from sources in LDS archives - are not being read by LDS members. They're being read by ex-Mormons, historians, and people like me.

And if we repeat what Ph.Ds in history, teaching Mormon history, using documents from Mormon archives, are writing - we're called Anti-Mormon. And what we say is a 'lie," because the church isn't teaching this information. And 'faith-promoting' historians aren't publishing it, nor is the LDS church.

But it's out there. And more is getting out there all the time.

But don't believe what I say; research it for yourself if you are interested.