Saints

What Saints is

Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days is the official narrative history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — a four-volume account published between 2018 and 2024. It is written in an accessible, story-driven style, deliberately closer to a true story than a textbook: the history unfolds through scenes, events, and the lives of named individuals, told in chronological sequence across the four volumes. Together they trace the Church’s story from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century through the global Church of the recent past.

As an official history, it is produced by the Church itself and draws on its archives and sources, with the digital edition linking to supporting references for readers who want to go deeper. As neutral buyer information: it is written from within the Latter-day Saint tradition and for a broad readership in it, and it tells the tradition’s story in the tradition’s own voice. It is free to read in the Gospel Library app and on the Church website, free as audio, and available in low-cost print volumes for readers who want a physical copy.

Why Latter-day Saints read their history this way

The single biggest practical difference between Saints and most institutional histories is that it was written to be read for pleasure, not consulted for reference. A great many official histories are organized to be authoritative and thorough at the expense of being inviting — you look things up in them. Saints inverts that priority: it is built as a narrative, with people you follow and scenes that move, so that an ordinary member can sit down in the evening and simply read it the way they would read any good true story. The accessibility is not incidental; it is the entire design goal.

That changes how the history functions in a member’s life. Rather than encountering their tradition’s past as a list of dates and doctrines absorbed in fragments, a reader can take it in as a continuous story with a beginning and a through-line — early gatherings and migrations, growth and hardship, expansion into a worldwide Church. Because the four volumes are chronological and each reads as its own book, a member can follow the whole arc or drop into the era they care about. For the reader inside the tradition, Saints turns “Church history” from a subject into a story they can actually live inside for a few hundred pages at a time.

A four-volume story told as narrative

The defining feature of Saints is its form: it is narrative history, written in scenes. Where a conventional institutional history might proceed topic by topic, Saints proceeds the way a story does — following named people through the events of their lives, rendering moments rather than summarizing them, and letting the chronology carry the reader forward. Across four volumes, that approach builds one long, continuous account, from the tradition’s early-nineteenth-century origins through the recent, global Church, with each volume covering a defined stretch of the timeline.

The reason this matters is that it makes a long and complex history legible to a general reader. A scene with people in it is far easier to remember and care about than a paragraph of dates, and Saints leans on that throughout. The choice has a tradeoff — narrative emphasis means the books read more like story than like sustained analytical argument — but it is the right trade for the project’s purpose. For a member who has only ever known their history in pieces, the four volumes assemble those pieces into something that finally reads as a whole.

Free in Gospel Library, with print and audio to match

Access is where Saints is unusually generous, and the headline is simple: it is free. All four volumes are complete in the Gospel Library app and on churchofjesuschrist.org, with no premium tier and nothing paywalled. The digital edition links to supporting references for readers who want to trace a source, and a free Church account syncs reading progress and notes across devices, though you do not need one to read. A full audio edition is free as well — which matters for a history this long, since many readers will take it in by listening on a commute or a walk.

For readers who want a physical copy, the print volumes are sold near cost through Church distribution and retailers — typically only a few dollars each, with the complete four-volume set running modestly for what it is. The practical upshot is that no format is gated behind another: a reader can start free on a phone, switch to audio for the long stretches, and pick up the print volumes if they want something on the shelf. Few multi-volume histories of any institution are this accessible across this many formats at this price.

An official, documented account written for everyone

Saints is the Church’s own history, and that standpoint shapes what it is. As an official account it draws on the Church’s archives and historical sources, and the digital edition surfaces references so a reader can follow the documentation behind the narrative. At the same time, it is written deliberately for a general readership rather than for specialists — the prose is plain and the storytelling is foregrounded, so the documentation supports the narrative without burdening it. The result is a history that is both sourced and readable.

That dual character — official and accessible — is the point of difference a reader should understand going in. Because it is produced by the Church for its members, it tells the tradition’s story from within the tradition, in the tradition’s voice; a reader specifically seeking an outside or independent treatment should know that this is not that. What it is, instead, is the authoritative narrative version of how the Latter-day Saint tradition tells its own story — written so a teenager, a new convert, or a lifelong member can all read it with equal ease, and documented enough that a curious reader can keep pulling threads.

Pricing

Where Saints falls behind

Length. This is a four-volume set, and read in full it is a real commitment rather than a single sitting. A reader who wants one short, brisk history of the tradition will find Saints more than they were looking for. The free audio edition softens this — long histories go down easier listened to — but the scope is what it is, and a newcomer should know they are starting a multi-book project, not a weekend read.

Narrative over analysis. By design, Saints tells its story through scenes and people rather than through sustained academic argument, and that choice has a cost for some readers. It is not a critical-historiography monograph weighing competing interpretations at length; it is a readable narrative. That is the right call for its purpose and audience, but a reader who specifically wants dense analytical history will experience the storytelling emphasis as a limit rather than a strength.

An official standpoint. Saints is written and published by the Church itself, for its own readers, and it tells the tradition’s story from inside the tradition. That is exactly what many readers want, but a reader seeking an outside or independent account should understand the book’s vantage point before they begin. It is the authoritative in-house narrative, not a third-party one.

Released incrementally. Because the volumes appeared over several years, from 2018 to 2024, the project was experienced piecemeal by its first readers, who waited between installments. A newcomer today picks it up complete, which is the better position — but it is worth knowing that what now reads as a finished four-volume arc was a multi-year publishing effort rather than a single release.

Saints vs. the Joseph Smith Papers vs. Gospel Library

It helps to see where Saints sits among the historical resources a Latter-day Saint might use, because they do genuinely different jobs. Saints is the narrative — the accessible, story-driven account written for a general reader to sit and read. The Joseph Smith Papers, by contrast, is the documentary project: a scholarly edition of the foundational documents themselves, transcribed and annotated for researchers and serious students. Where Saints tells you the story, the Papers hand you the primary sources behind a key part of it.

Different strengths. Saints is the one to read first — it is broad, continuous, and built for engagement, carrying the whole arc from the early nineteenth century to the recent past. The Joseph Smith Papers is deeper and narrower — invaluable when you want to go to the documents rather than the narrative, but far more than a casual reader needs. Many people read Saints for the story and dip into the Papers only when a particular episode makes them want the original record. If your need is to understand the history, start with Saints; if it is to examine the sources, that is the Papers’ territory.

If you are deciding where to read rather than what, the companion is the app. Gospel Library is the official, free home that hosts Saints, the Joseph Smith Papers materials, the scriptures, and much more together in one place. The history is the same wherever you read it — the question is which environment fits how you study, and for most readers Gospel Library is simply where Saints already lives, free and synced, alongside everything else.

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