This is an ambitious book. There is a great deal of talk in Mormon studies about making the field less parochial and more comparative—less about Mormonism per se and more about broader questions about religion and society Mormonism might be marshaled to answer. Kahlert lays out a theory and model for doing so that future scholars of American religion may find promising. His efforts are exhaustive, and though the book's expansiveness leads him onto some soft ground, there is much of value here.

Kahlert explicitly advances a thesis statement and rubric for its evaluation in the beginning of the book and revisits both in the end. The theoretical question he wants to explore is, as he puts it, “a comparison between the role of the events and the influence of the structures” (3). By “events,” Kahlert means the aims and actions of individuals, like, for instance, Joseph Smith, Jr.; by “structures” he means broader institutions and processes, like the economy. The question here is the old historical chestnut of agency. Kahlert's investigation of Mormonism is on the face of it a test of Joseph Smith's success at restoring what he took to be the New Testament economic order in the context of the rapidly commercializing economy in the young American republic. More broadly, it is an exploration of how possible it is for humans to impose their desires upon the social and economic structures in which they live.

It might not surprise readers familiar with historiographical classics to learn that Kahlert takes as a model Fernand Braudel's history of the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II. Like Braudel, Kahlert believes that in order to properly understand particular “events” readers must first understand geographical and social time, which function on scales far beyond individual lives. Accordingly, after he presents his theoretical model, Kahlert examines in great detail the economic world of the early American republic. Readers will learn how fast steamships on the Mississippi River could travel, how asheries produced potash, how much it cost to build the Erie Canal, and when frontier farmers got up in the morning. The detail may be overwhelming, but it is also frequently fascinating and gestures to Kahlert's central point: the economic forces that governed the lives of Joseph Smith, Jr. and the thousands of other Americans who became Mormon in the early nineteenth century were often so complex as to be beyond comprehension, let alone manipulation.

Of course, this did not stop Smith from trying. The heart of Kahlert's book are seven case studies in which Mormons—more or less successfully—sought to engage or sometimes transform the economic orders in which they found themselves. These do not always mesh together as well as one might wish. I found particularly provocative Kahlert's analysis of what he calls “Joseph Smith Jr's socio-economic baseline” (76), which suggests that Smith's talent with a seer stone allowed him to escape his family's declining economic fortunes and descent into hired labor. Instead, Smith managed to create himself as a “supernatural consultant,” an expert—comparable to the emerging legal or medical professions—whose religious talents justified extraction of compensation, housing, and economic support from his congregations (98). Kahlert does not see Smith as a conman or a fraud but rather a religious entrepreneur, a quintessentially modern figure. At the same time, however, Smith sought to resist the encroachments of modernity, sometimes using that same invocation of expertise. His adventures in banking are a case in point. Kahlert takes on other historians who have explored what is sometimes called the “Kirtland Safety Society,” a bank Smith hoped to charter in Kirtland, Ohio. The Safety Society failed in a rather spectacular fashion, and while some (particularly Mormon) historians have pinned its failure on the larger economic meltdowns of the Panic of 1837, Kahlert maintains that blame rather lies with the dramatic incompetence of Smith and those surrounding him, who knew little about managing a bank and pressed on, to the detriment of those who invested in the Society, even after the Ohio legislature refused to grant their venture a bank charter. Smith thus sought both to resist and accommodate modernity, presenting himself as a religious consultant who directed his flock in opposition to the world of burgeoning commercial and industrial capitalism around them. Often these efforts simply collapsed.

Kahlert sometimes enunciates this argument more clearly than at other times; some of his case studies wander down tangents and digressions that do not always serve the book's central theme. His discussion of the law of consecration, in which Smith exhorted his followers to deed their property to the church for equitable redistribution, is quite long but mostly recapitulates the arguments of earlier historians like Leonard Arrington, who maintained the law failed because there simply were not enough resources to supply each Mormon with their needs. Kahlert spends a great deal of time on detail but doesn't stamp the story with his own argument as much as he might. What is more, Kahlert's conclusion ventures into theology, drawing on the work of biblical scholar Rudolf Bultmann to argue that Mormon “salvation history” depends too much on the ahistorical narratives in the Bible and Book of Mormon—a somewhat odd ending for a work of economic history, though one Kahlert seeks to link to the economic failures of Joseph Smith's restorationism. Instead, Kahlert urges modern Mormonism to adopt a community-based interpretation of sacred history less dependent on the visionary authority of charismatics like Joseph Smith.

The book, then, could easily be tightened, and paring out of extraneous detail would likely strengthen the force and clarity of its argument. Nonetheless, Kahlert has done us the service of illustrating how Mormonism might be used to illustrate larger stories about early American society and culture.