taylor petrey and amy hoyt'sThe Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender is a veritable gold mine of material for scholars interested in the historical and contemporary consideration of gender and gender identity as it relates to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, here referred to as the Mormons. Putting together a volume such as this requires an adroit balance, since the editors and authors must be aware of larger field questions related to gender studies, social science methodologies, religious studies and theological approaches to scholarship, and, obviously, discussions in Mormon studies and Mormon history. Mormonism itself is not a singular thing, and the editors must be aware of the various branches and divisions within the LDS, FLDS, and RLDS Churches (to name just three), in addition to hundreds of other autonomous groups. In this regard, the editors have done a commendable job of offering both a wide and deep set of considerations.Further, the editors provide a helpful, if brief, overview gesturing to some of these discussions and concerns in their introduction. However, as a reader, I would have appreciated a more comprehensive conversation about just exactly who and what is the object of study in a book on Mormonism and gender. It does seem to be the mainstream LDS Church headquartered in Salt Lake City that occupies the heart of the editors’ and authors’ interest rather than any of its cousins, who are still colloquially referred to as Mormons.With a stated investment in intersectionality—which takes up gender as a multi-sited archive of experience and inquiry that is reflective of the overlaps between race, class, gender, and other iterations of identity—the editors have cultivated a set of original essays that thinks capaciously across national borders, including specific investigations into under-considered communities such as those in Nicaragua, Nigeria, and Peru. When focusing on North America, the volume is intent on examining what we might consider to be the “gender flashpoints” related to the LDS Church. This includes how the church has negotiated and continues to negotiate such topics as plural marriage, women's role in church governance, homosexuality and church membership, sexual purity mandates, sexual violence occurrences, and transgender identity. There are also chapters in the volume devoted to discussions on race and the LDS Church, in both a contemporary and an historical context.Petrey and Hoyt state in their introduction that they have drawn together authors that span many diverse considerations having to do with Mormonism and gender studies. These scholars include some of the undisputed leaders in Mormon studies and women's history, such as Claudia L. Bushman and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, as well as a new generation of scholars, such as Mary Campbell and Matthew Bowman, whose work is helping to redefine the broader cultural impact of Mormons and Mormonism. The collection of topics and essays are broad, and at times while reading I did worry that the breadth of the volume inadvertently reinforces a sense of essentialism, so one chapter on homosexuality and Mormonism, for instance, might be taken to represent all experiences of homosexuality and Mormonism. It is hard to avoid such metonymic connections in a book dedicated to covering so much ground, but I do wish the editors had reminded readers that even in the context of breadth there is diversity among samples.With forty-six authors filling out 628 pages, the real question about usability for me lies in the book's paratext, and I am happy to report that the editors have done an excellent job of providing footnotes, bibliographies, and an extensive index to help the reader navigate the book's riches. The entry on polygamy, for instance, covers nearly a full column of the index, and there are some helpful details included in the index that make finding material much easier. As one example, under the indexical heading for “men and the priesthood,” the editors kindly offer a specific reference to masculinity with the title, “priesthood as mechanism of masculine hegemony.” To me, this suggests a capacity to think about the social construction of masculinity and the church's tacit investment in the social dividends of hegemonic masculinity, rather than simply centering a consideration of what men do in the church as a stand-in for gender.I do think, however, that there could have been a bigger consideration of gender variance in this book. One example would be a discussion of how those assigned female at birth and now identifying as male have a potentially greater access to the dividends of male authority and privilege within the church (depending largely on the particular stake). But gender variance also allows us to consider how those in outwardly normative families—that is, heterosexual monogamous groupings—may still give rise to conflict if male partners are perceived as effeminate and female partners as masculinized.As a critical humanities scholar who has examined mediated Mormonism, my primary critique is that the volume does not sufficiently consider media and its extensive spread or influence. While I can appreciate the reasons why this might be the case, particularly since the volume very specifically announces its research methodology as being grounded in the social sciences, it would still be possible to include social science analyses of cultural texts. But even given this absence and my own predilections, there is much of value in this book that speaks directly to the conjoined considerations of Mormonism and gender. I only wish it had been available to me when I was writing my own book, and I will surely use the handbook as a resource for teaching and future projects. Overall, I consider the handbook an important, even indispensable, research tool for those engaged in the study of gender and Mormonism.