When Joseph Smith ran for president as a radical protest candidate in 1844, Mormons were a deeply distrusted group in American society, and their efforts to enter public life were met with derision. When Mitt Romney ran for president as a Republican in 2008 and 2012, the public had come to regard Mormons as consummate Americans: patriotic, family-oriented, and conservative. How did this shift occur?

In this collection, prominent scholars of Mormonism, including Claudia L. Bushman, Richard Lyman Bushman, Jan Shipps, and Philip L. Barlow, follow the religion's quest for legitimacy in the United States and its intersection with American politics. From Brigham Young's skirmishes with the federal government over polygamy to the Mormon involvement in California's Proposition 8, contributors combine sociology, political science, race and gender studies, and popular culture to track Mormonism's rapid integration into American life. The book takes a broad view of the religion's history, considering its treatment of women and African Americans and its portrayal in popular culture and the media. With essays from both Mormon and non-Mormon scholars, this anthology tells a big-picture story of a small sect that became a major player in American politics.

List of Illustrations
Introduction, by Randall Balmer and Jana Riess
Part I: Origins and Tensions
1. Joseph Smith's Presidential Ambitions, by Richard Lyman Bushman
2. Unpopular Sovereignty: Brigham Young and the U.S. Government, 1847–1877, by John G. Turner
3. Polygamy in the Nation's Capitol: Protestant Women and the 1899 Campaign Against B. H. Roberts, by Jana Riess
4. Eternal Progression: Mormonism and American Progressivism, by Matthew Bowman
Part II: Shifting Alliances
5. Ezra Taft Benson and the Conservative Turn of "Those Amazing Mormons," by Jan Shipps
6. Testimony and Theology: The Mormon Struggle with America's Civil Religion, by Russell Arben Fox
7. Chosen Land, Chosen People: Religious and American Exceptionalism Among the Mormons, by Philip L. Barlow
8. Like Father, Unlike Son: The Governors Romney, the Kennedy Paradigm, and the Mormon Question, by Randall Balmer
Part III: Into the Twenty-first Century
9. A Politically Peculiar People: How Mormons Moved into and Then out of the Political Mainstream, by David E. Campbell, Christopher F. Karpowitz and J. Quin Monson
10. "Twice-told Tale": Telling Two Histories of Mormon-Black Relations During the 2012 Presidential Election, by Max Perry Mueller
11. Mormon Women Talk Politics, by Claudia L. Bushman
12. On the "Underground": What the Mormon "Yes on 8" Campaign Reveals About the Future of Mormons in American Political Life, by Joanna Brooks
13. Mitt, Mormonism, and the Media: An Unfamiliar Faith Takes the Stage in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election, by Peggy Fletcher Stack
List of Contributors
Index