On Thursday, September 14, 1893, at the World's Parliament of Religions meeting concurrent with the World's Fair in Chicago, John Henry Barrows stopped Brigham H. Roberts in the corridor. Barrows, a Presbyterian minister, was one of the chief organizers of the Parliament. Roberts, a young mustachioed Briton, was one of Mormonism's most vocal theologians. Since July the two had been involved in a slowly heating exchange of letters. Roberts wanted the chance to address the Parliament in assembly and for Mormons to be granted exhibition space—both opportunities given to other faiths. Barrows took these requests coolly, and it was only with great effort that Roberts managed to extract permission to deliver a single paper. But upon finding out that he would be assigned “Hall Three,” which seated only two hundred (far from the three thousand hosted in the main hall) and which was reserved for, as Barrows charmingly put it, papers of a “less popular character,” Roberts dashed off an angry note (169).

Seeing this Mormon in the corridor, then, Barrows took the opportunity to inform Roberts that Hall Three was all he had any right to expect. After all, Barrows said later, if Mormons were allowed full participation in the Parliament, who would be next? Secularists? Freethinkers? Mormons were not victims of any personal animus, he explained; it was simply that they did not qualify as a serious religion.

Historians have long recognized the symbolic importance of the Parliament and the World's Fair: for many participants, these gatherings represented the cutting edge of human progress, economically, spiritually, and socially. Elsewhere at the Fair women's rights organizations gathered, the world's artists presented their work, and pavilions dedicated to various sciences offered examples of the greatest achievements of human science. Its boosters designed the Fair to be a showcase of human progress.

No wonder, then, that Mormons wanted to be involved. To some degree, they shared in these successes. Yet Roberts's struggles were also emblematic of Mormons' experience. In this book Reid Neilson adds not only to our knowledge of Mormon history, but also to our understanding of the ongoing American debate about what constituted legitimate religion. We know a great deal about how Americans perceived Mormons, but Neilson proposes a different angle: he seeks to understand how Mormons presented themselves.

Neilson's first two chapters explain Mormons' slowly dawning realization of the value of good public relations. For the first half-century after Joseph Smith founded the religion, dogged by persecution and national repulsion at the practice of polygamy, Mormons related to the outside world primarily through apologetics and evangelism. To the Saints, all non-Mormons seemed either potential persecutors or possible converts. The federal government's eradication of polygamy in the 1880s and 1890s finally convinced some they needed better press, and it often fell to younger Mormons like Roberts to convince their leaders—then, as now, cautious—of the fact. The World's Fair was a prime opportunity.

Neilson's next chapters explore particular aspects of Mormons' participation at the Fair. Roberts's efforts to gain recognition at the Parliament of Religion were frustrating, but Mormons learned from the experience. While Barrows resisted Roberts, others at the Parliament and in the Chicago press voiced disquiet with his treatment of Mormons, a gratifying surprise. Moreover, Neilson claims attendance at the fair changed how Mormons themselves viewed the world. Their experience “radically alter[ed] the Mormon mental map of non-Christian religions.” It moderated Mormonism's powerful exclusiveness, and, after the Fair, Roberts in particular began to grapple with, as he put it, “the amount of truth to be found in all systems of religion” (163). It was at the Fair that Mormons began to consider seriously their place in a diverse religious world.

Neilson also gives attention to the prize-winning performance of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at a Welsh singing competition. Mormons were taken aback repeatedly by the praise their Choir received, and only agreed to perform in the competition after its organizers convinced its directors, who in turn persuaded the leaders of the church of the value of publicity. Neilson argues that the Choir gained more acclaim than did Roberts because the competition did not draw overt attention to Mormonism as a religion.

A similar insight governs Neilson's discussion of Mormon involvement in various women's events held in tandem with the Fair, particularly the World's Congress of Representative Women, where Mormon women offered papers and presided at sessions. While feminists like Susan B. Anthony never sought to hide their dislike for Mormon polygamy and patriarchy (for them commitment to causes like women's suffrage trumped religion), they were willing to allow Mormon women to join their campaign.

Neilson's arguments speak to broader questions of religious pluralism in America, yet the book feels a bit padded with digressions into topics like the history of Mormon publishing and frequent quotations from secondary sources—odd, because there are barely 200 pages of text. Additionally, the book wants a bit for copyediting; Neilson repeatedly refers to President Benjamin Harrison by the name of his grandfather William Henry Harrison (who, to be fair, was also a president), and there are occasional errors in capitalization and punctuation.

Nonetheless, when Nielson focuses on the World's Fair, his central points are well made and instructive. Mormonism found itself most accepted in arenas that had the least to do with its religious claims. Roberts's theological arguments made little progress in gaining acceptance for Mormonism, while Mormon women like Emmeline Wells gained integration through showing that their Mormonism would not impede their participation in American life. In the aftermath of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, in which the candidate was chastised for not discussing his religion's theology at the same time as a musical mocking it played on Broadway, the story Neilson has to tell is useful indeed.