Richard S. Van Wagoner was the author of Mormon Polygamy: A History (1985, 1989), Lehi: Portraits of a Utah Town (1990), Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess(1994), Pioneering Lehi City: A 150-Year Pictorial History (2002), editor of The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, five volumes (2010), and coauthor of A Book of Mormons(1982). He published articles in BYU Studies, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Sunstone, Utah Historical Quarterly, and Utah Holiday. He received writing awards from the Dialogue Foundation, the John Whitmer Historical Association, the Mormon History Association, and the Utah State Historical Society. He earned an M.S. degree from Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah) in 1970. Trained as a clinical audiologist, he owned and operated Mountain West Hearing Center in Salt Lake City. He was a lifelong resident of Lehi, Utah; a founding member of the Lehi Historical Preservation Commission; and served as Lehi City's Historical Archivist. He was a co-founder, a member of the Board of Directors, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of Signature Books (Salt Lake City).