{"product_id":"9781452942865","title":"Building Zion: The Material World of Mormon Settlement","description":"\u003cp\u003eFor Mormons, the second coming of Christ and the subsequent millennium will arrive only when the earth has been perfected through the building of a model world called Zion. Throughout the nineteenth century the Latter-day Saints followed this vision, creating a material world—first in Missouri and Illinois but most importantly and permanently in Utah and surrounding western states—that serves as a foundation for understanding their concept of an ideal universe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBuilding Zion\u003c\/em\u003e is, in essence, the biography of the cultural landscape of western LDS settlements. Through the physical forms Zion assumed, it tells the life story of a set of Mormon communities—how they were conceived and constructed and inhabited—and what this material manifestation of Zion reveals about what it meant to be a Mormon in the nineteenth century. Focusing on a network of small towns in Utah, Thomas Carter explores the key elements of the Mormon cultural landscape: town planning, residences (including polygamous houses), stores and other nonreligious buildings, meetinghouses, and temples. Zion, we see, is an evolving entity, reflecting the church’s shift from group-oriented millenarian goals to more individualized endeavors centered on personal salvation and exaltation. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBuilding Zion\u003c\/em\u003e demonstrates how this cultural landscape draws its singularity from a unique blending of sacred and secular spaces, a division that characterized the Mormon material world in the late nineteenth century and continues to do so today.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Minnesota Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47134843142384,"sku":"9781452942865","price":37.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781452942865_p0.jpg?v=1763848661","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781452942865","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}