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The first major history of Mormonism in a decade, drawing on newly available sources to reveal a profoundly divided faith that has nevertheless shaped the nation.The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 in the so-called burned-over district of western New York, which seemed to produce seers and prophets daily. Most of the new creeds flamed out; Smith's would endure. How Mormonism succeeded -- and how it has fundamentally shaped American culture -- is the story told by historian Benjamin Park in American Zion. While most prior accounts of the Mormons treat them as a monoculture existing outside the main currents of American life, Park is one of the first to demonstrate that Mormonism became central to American views of religious liberty and minority rights -- and that Mormonism has been riven by deep internal divisions over gender, race, and sexuality.