Overall very engaging! This book is about the life of one man who tried to take control of the nascent Mormon flock after Joseph Smith's death. Spoiler: Brigham Young wins out. But more than that, it pulls back the wool on the cultural zeitgeist that is the secret sauce of the American Dream.

It turns out that America has always had a particular weakness for the pursuit of fame and worshipping the "confidence man." We fall for it again, and again, and again. We love the story of the quick-on-his-feet entrepreneur, as epitomized by the Wizard of Oz or the snake-oil salesman—it matters not that we are the ones fooled out of our money, dignity, and for us millennials, our national inheritance. If we are allowed to eventually learn the machinations behind the man, then all is forgiven in honor of his audacity, guile, and showmanship.

The book quotes Charles Dickens who perceived this right away. Writing on his visit to America, he said:
“Another prominent feature is the love of ‘smart’ dealing; which gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust; many a defalcation, public and private; and enables many a knave to hold his head up with the best, who well deserves a halter; though it has not been without its retributive operation, for this smartness has done more in a few years to impair the public credit, and to cripple the public resources, than dull honesty, however rash, could have effected in a century. The merits of a broken speculation, or a bankruptcy, or of a successful scoundrel, are not gauged by its or his observances of the golden rule, ‘Do as you would be done by,’ but are considered with reference to their smartness…

"The following dialogue I have held a hundred times, 'Is it not a very disgraceful circumstance that such a man as So-and-so should be acquiring a large property by the most infamous and odious means, and, notwithstanding all the crimes of which he has been guilty, should be tolerated and abetted by your citizens? He is a public nuisance, is he not?'

'Yes, sir.'

'A convicted liar?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And he is utterly dishonorable, debased, and profligate?'

'Yes, sir.'

'In the name of wonder then, what is his merit?'

'Well, sir, he is a smart man.'"