Modern reprints have generally overlook Pratt's more controversial ideas. In the present compilation, care has been taken to remain faithful to the originals, leaving nothing out.

One of the first converts to the LDS church, Parley Parker Pratt (1807-57) would eventually become early Mormonism's most famous and widely published defender. Born in western New York, he converted to Mormonism in late 1830 and was called to the Quorum of Twelve Apostles five years later as one of its founding members. He was strong-willed and largely self-educated, as his vitae reflects: he served several missions for the church; participated in Zion's Camp, the militia which marched to Missouri to rescue threatened church members; quarreled with Joseph Smith over finances and narrowly escaped excommunication; founded the Latter-day Saints' Millennial Starin England; married several plural wives in Nauvoo, Illinois; immigrated to the Great Salt Lake valley; and continued to fill additional overseas missions. Best known for his fiery apologetic writings such as A Voice of Warning (1837), Key to the Science of Theology (1855), and for his autobiography which was published posthumously in 1874 by his son, who wrote most of it, Pratt nevertheless defined Mormon doctrine and theology for much of the nineteenth century. He was killed in 1857 in Arkansas by the estranged husband of one of his polygamous wives. The husband, an outsider, did not share Pratt's and other Mormons' contempt for civil authority over marriage.

Parley Parker Pratt, son of Jared Pratt and Charity Dickson, was born in 1807 in Burlington, New York. He married Thankful Halsey in 1827. He died in 1857 in Alma, Arkansas. Includes a collection of esays about his life.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began settling in Missouri in 1831. The original place of settlement was Jackson County, on the western border of the state. As early as 1832 trouble arose between the Mormons and their Missouri neighbors. In 1833 mobs drove the Mormons from Jackson County and into the neighboring counties of Clay and Ray and further north into what eventually became Caldwell and Davies Counties. The Mormons again built communities and planted crops. By 1836, mobs again began to molest the Mormon communities. The Mormons living in the counties of Ray and Clay were again forced to flee their homes and joined other members of the Church living in Caldwell and Davies Counties. The respite, however, was short lived as persecution and mob violence came to a head in the summer and fall of 1838. Joseph Smith and other Mormon leaders were placed in Liberty Jail while the body of the Church was forced to flee the state to Iowa Territory and the State of Illinois. As early as 1839 members of the Church who had been forced to flee Missouri began preparing affidavits and petitioning for compensation for their losses and suffering at the hands of the Missourians.

Over the Rim is the first book about an important but little-known expedition sent by Brigham Young to explore southern Utah. Led by Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt, the party traveled from Salt Lake City south across the rim of the Great Basin to the Virgin River near future St. George. They brought back to Mormon leaders their first detailed portrait of the country to the south that the church planned to settle.