Leonard J. Arrington (July 2, 1917 - February 11, 1999) was born in Twin Falls, Idaho. He earned a doctorate in economics from the University of North Carolina in March 1952. In 1958 Harvard University Press published his Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, a classic in western American history based on his dissertation.

He established the Mormon History Association and served as its first president. He created the Western Historical Quarterly, the premier academic journal of the American West and also served as president of the Western History Association.

In 1972, he became Church Historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and was simultaneously appointed as Lemuel H. Redd Professor of Western History and Director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University (BYU). Arrington was Church Historian until the LDS Church transferred his division to BYU in 1982 and renamed it the "Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History".

Among many of Arrington's publications are notable works like The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints and Brigham Young: American Moses.

External links

• Biographical sketch
• Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900; University of Illinois Press; ISBN 0252029720; (1958; Hardcover, October 2004).
• The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints; University of Illinois Press; ISBN 0252062361 (1979; Paperback, 1992)
• Brigham Young: American Moses; University of Illinois Press; ISBN 0252012968, (1985; Paperback, 1986)