The upcoming four-volume official history of the Church, titled Saints, now has its own site and subdomain at LDS.org. There are three topic buttons on the landing page: (1) Topics, with links to short essays on topics such as revivals, Christian churches in Joseph Smith’s day, and Joseph Smith’s leg surgery, which everyone seems to think is a really important part of the story. (2) The Purpose of Saints, linking to a short article in the Feb. 2018 Ensign by Elder Snow, a Seventy serving as Church Historian, introducing the series and encouraging members of the Church to actually read it. The last sentence in the article states, “Additional in-depth material on selected topics will be published online to support each volume.” (3) Videos, with a bunch of short LDS history videos.
The site includes a link to the first chapter of the first volume, so you can go read it for yourself right now. It is posted online and also included in the February 2018 Ensign, so you won’t be the only one reading it. This isn’t like the roll out of the Gospel Topics Essays, which were quietly inserted in the large topics section at LDS.org and are still not given a lot of attention by senior leaders (many local leaders and members are not even aware of them). This new series is, in effect, the long-awaited LDS leadership response to the History Division’s publication back in 1976 of The Story of the Latter-day Saints. That volume was written by James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, two LDS historians working under the direction of the Church Historian Leonard Arrington, the first actual historian to hold that office. However — and let’s be candid about this — the volume was simply too honest about LDS history and too direct in its presentation and too willing to provide full historical context to LDS events to suit the tastes of some senior apostles at the time. The book was never adopted by the Church as a replacement for Essentials in Church History, Joseph Fielding Smith’s one-volume LDS history that was, by the 1970s, rather dated both in terms of content and approach. To me, it looks like Saints is what Elder Benson wanted to see in 1976, but with lots more footnotes.
So I’m going to read the first chapter now. [Ten minutes later …] Well, it’s a big improvement over Our Heritage, which was the only book cited in the LDS Sunday School manual for Church History. Saints , at least in the first chapter, includes lots of footnotes to sources from the Joseph Smith Papers Project. It is careful to include the vignettes most Mormons have heard in Sunday School (the leg operation, the mean teamster driving Lucy and her children to Palmyra, poking fun at Protestant preachers and ministers) but is somewhat restrained in the retellings. The footnotes suggest reliance primarily on Lucy Mack Smith’s late memoir of those early days and Joseph Smith’s late 1838 account of his early experience in New York.
There are no footnotes to Rough Stone Rolling or other publications by LDS historians — as if the field of LDS history does not exist and the unnamed authors of this chapter are starting from scratch. It looks like they’ll take anything written by Lucy or Joseph at face value, so it’s not clear that historians are actually running the project (historians evaluate sources, they don’t just take them at face value, and they deem contemporary sources more reliable than late sources). And the rather convoluted history of Lucy Mack Smith’s history merits some comment, particularly if the authors are going to rely on it as one of their main sources for the narrative. I’m guessing we will get additional commentary on the writing of the volumes, the sources used, and the books and articles not cited (and not consulted?) as things move forward and additional chapters are released.
Wheat & Tares 
While I can acknowledge that the LDS Church is making improvements in telling a more truthful and comprehensive version of it’s history, I’m afraid that (for me at least) my trust and confidence in “The Church” telling it’s full and complete history (warts and all) no longer exists. Many respected historians (like Richard Bushman) have blazed right beyond them. And, thank God for that!
On the question of how Lucy Mack Smith’s history is used in Saints, check out this new article (linked to from the footnotes): https://lds.org/languages/eng/content/history/topics/lucy-mack-smith?lang=eng
“Like all sources that present narratives from memory, Lucy Mack Smith’s account has flaws, exaggerations, and biases. Historians who have studied her narrative, however, conclude that errors in her history are “relatively minor and infrequent.” Of the 200 names in her history, more than 190 are corroborated by other sources.10 Moreover, there is no evidence that Lucy’s mind was impaired. A visitor to Nauvoo in 1855 spoke to Lucy and noted that she had “retained her faculties to a remarkable degree.”11 Lucy’s narrative gives insight into her personality, beliefs, and understanding of Joseph Smith’s calling. It also provides accounts of significant Smith family and Church history events for which there are no other sources. Her history is used in Saints primarily to describe these events and for the dialogue she re-creates from memory.”
I much better written and engaging prose. Certinally an upgrade from the largely folklore history we are used too.
Looking forward to more
For what it’s worth, I think Saints (at least Ch. 1) is right on par with Bushman. It’s not the same stuff stylistically, but I don’t see it having any more of an apologetic tone than Bushman took. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Though it might not be an outsider’s history (should it be?), it is a vast improvement, and I’ll give the Church full credit for that progress.
It looks very good (at least so far). But, it is only one chapter out of four books. Here is to hope.
ETB was upset abou the word “communitarian” in the Story of the Latter-Day Saints and cancelled printing in mid run. It wasn’t reprinted until after his death.
“…so it’s not clear that historians are actually running the project…”
Or they’re just historians who’ve decided to check some of their academic training at the door.
While the sources going into this project appear to be more varied and give this project more color than “Our Heritage,” I anticipate it’s main accomplishment will be to re-enforce some of the more simplistic narratives of Church history.
I’ll add that it seems like the project, by describing itself as the “inspiring true story of the Restoration” only raises the stakes for the Church with regards to members who may become disaffected over simplistic portrayals of Church history.