4 Walls 8 Windows, small press extraordinaire, declined last year even to look at a proposal for Missionary Man because they said they had a book-length scholarly study of Mormonism already on their schedule. Fair enough.

That book is out. It's called One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church, and it's written by so-called religious journalist Richard Abanes. This is the selfsame muckraker who has brought us such other recent favorites as Harry Potter and the Bible: The Menace Behind the Magick and Fantasy and Your Family: Exploring the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Modern Magick.

It's one thing to be bumped by reputable scholarship. This ... well, it's something else. Something demoralizing.