Leonard J. Arrington
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Leonard J. Arrington (July 2, 1917 – February 11, 1999) was born in Twin Falls, Idaho. He earned a doctorate in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in March 1952. In 1958 Harvard University Press published his Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, a classic in western American history based on his dissertation.
Arrington established the Mormon History Association and served as its first president. He created the Western Historical Quarterly, the premier academic journal of the American West and also served as president of the Western History Association.
In 1972, Arrington was appointed Church Historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and was simultaneously appointed as Lemuel H. Redd Professor of Western History and Director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University (BYU). Arrington was Church Historian until the LDS Church transferred his division to BYU in 1982 and renamed it the "Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History".
Many of Arrington's publications are considered notable, including The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints and Brigham Young: American Moses.
[edit] Publications
- Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900; University of Illinois Press; ISBN 0-252-02972-0; (1958; Hardcover, reprint October 2004).
- The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints; University of Illinois Press; ISBN 0-252-06236-1 (1979; Paperback, 1992)
- Brigham Young: American Moses; University of Illinois Press; ISBN 0-252-01296-8, (1985; Paperback, 1986)
- Saints without Halos; The Human Side of Mormon History with Davis Bitton; Signature Books (1981).
