In one of the most unlikely coups in college basketball history, BYU signed basketball phenomenon AJ Dybantsa—the number one high school player in the U.S. Dybantsa’s decision stunned the sports world, and AJ continues to garner national attention.

In their new book, Game Changers: AJ Dybantsa, BYU, and the Struggle for the Soul of Basketball, guests Matthew Bowman and Wayne LeCheminant explore why it is that a player like Dybantsa, who had his pick of any college in the nation, chose BYU. In answering that question, the authors delve into recent court rulings and institutional reform that put money at the forefront of college sports in ways the American public has never seen. And for generations before that, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built a theological structure and institutional commitment to basketball that historically led to the sport being central in its youth and missionary programs as well as at BYU. Bowman and LeCheminant place Dybantsa in the context of this history and culture and explore the tensions in the sport today.

Game Changers is now available in hardback, paperback, ebook, or audiobook format.

Award-winning historian Gary Bergera joins John Hatch to talk about the complicated legacy of Ernest L. Wilkinson, who served as BYU president from 1951–71. From Wilkinson’s dogged determination, to the challenges he posed for church presidents David O. McKay and Harold B. Lee, Bergera unpacks how Wilkinson’s personality shaped the university—and how he often misunderstood the impact he had on others. Bergera is the editor of the new documentary history, Educating Zion: The Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson.

Gary James Bergera was managing director of Signature Books from 1984 to 2000 and managing director of the Smith–Pettit Foundation from 2001 to 2022. He is the author or editor of eleven books. Most recently he edited the diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, published in three volumes as Confessions of a Mormon Historian. His publications have received awards from the Charles Redd Center at BYU, the Utah Historical Society, the Mormon History Association (MHA), the John Whitmer Historical Association, and the Dialogue Foundation. He served on the board of directors of MHA and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Mormon History and the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal. In 2018 he received MHA’s Leonard J. Arrington lifetime achievement award.

Author Brian Q. Cannon sits down with editorial manager John Hatch to discuss his new book, Building a Global Zion: The Life and Vision of David O. McKay. The interview offers an up-close look at how McKay’s compassion and love for others shaped his leadership and his global vision for building unity within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Brian Q. Cannon is the Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Professor of Western American History at BYU. He is the author of four books and coeditor of three, as well as more than forty articles and book chapters regarding rural history, Western American history, Latter-day Saint history, and social and cultural history.