Strang was considered the prophetic successor to Joseph Smith for the Mormons of the Midwest who later formed the nucleus for the membership of what is now the Community of Christ. Today, 150 years after Strang’s death, about 100 faithful followers in the United States still await the emergence of another prophet to succeed Strang. In the prophetic tradition of Joseph Smith, Strang similarly excavated ancient metallic plates and translated them into the Book of the Law of the Lord and the Rajah Manchou of Vorito. Like Joseph Smith, Strang instigated polygamy, secret ceremonies, baptism for the dead, and communal living. He also introduced a bloomer-like fashion for women, as well as other innovations. Like Joseph Smith, he had himself crowned king of the world.

Where previous treatments of Strang have relied either on inside or outside sources to show either a prophet or charlatan, Speek utilizes all sources, updates the record, corrects previous errors, and shows diverse perspectives. She recounts the turbulent and dramatic events of the 1840s-50s, including the plot to murder Strang and the heartbreaking exile of the Saints from Beaver Island. She traces the dispersion of this once formidable colony of Mormons to the forests of northwest Wisconsin, the far-flung outposts of southwest New Mexico, the hills of Lamoni, Iowa, and to Salt Lake City, Utah.

In one of the first scholarly book in English on Miron Białoszewski (1922–1983), Joanna Niżyńska illuminates the elusive prose of one of the most compelling and challenging postwar Polish writers. Niżyńska’s study, exemplary in its use of theoretical concepts, introduces English-language readers to a preeminent voice of Polish literature. Niżyńska explores how a fusion of seemingly irreconcilable qualities, such as the traumatic and the everyday, imbues Białoszewski’s writing with its idiosyncratic appeal. 

Białoszewski’s A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising (1977, revised 1991) describes the Poles’ heroic struggle to liberate Warsaw from Nazi occupation in 1944 as harrowing yet ordinary. His later prose represents everyday life permeated by traces of the traumatic. Niżyńska closely examines the topic of autobiography and homosexuality, showing how Białoszewski discloses his homosexuality but, paradoxically, renders it inconspicuous by hiding it in plain sight.