A review by tanyarobinson
Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide by Grant Hardy

5.0

I have read The Book of Mormon from cover to cover about 15 times in my life, and though I am far from an expert on this book of scripture, it is so familiar to me that I have to work pretty hard to get something new or meaningful out of it each time I read. For this reason, Grant Hardy's Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide was a revelation for me. He dives deeply into each narrator's language, style, and personality to find golden nuggets of knowledge that I'm sure I would overlook my entire life without his help. I've never understood that Nephi was a literary man for whom leaving behind the written culture of Jerusalem was such a sacrifice, and that his love for Isaiah was an expression of longing. I recognized on the surface that Mormon liked to tell stories in parallel (i e the two groups of people escaping Lamanite bondage by sneaking out in the middle of the night), but was oblivious to the many other times he used this technique. And I certainly never had caught that in concluding the record Moroni deliberately paraphrased the farewells of nearly every other BoM author.

I feel like my eyes were continually being opened by this book, and highly recommend it for every Latter-day Saint. Hardy tries to make the study applicable to nonmembers by touting the BoM's value as early American literature, but I'm not sure I fully buy into that. Still, this is one I am glad to own, and will continue to refer to year after year in my scripture study. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5.