Paul B Skousen Books in Order

If you want his historical adventure saga: Bassam and the Seven Secret Scrolls → Zafir and the Seventh Scroll → The Search for Rasha
If you want his anti-socialism books: The Naked Socialist → Comrade Paul's Socialist Bathroom Reader → The Naked Socialist Study Guide
If you want a quick civic primer: How to Read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence → The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence
If you want the deeper constitutional follow-up: How to Save the Constitution → The Federalist Papers Made Easier
If you want LDS history and reference: The Skousen Book of Mormon World Records → Treasures from the Journal of Discourses

Paul B Skousen writes the kind of books you usually only get from someone who has lived several different professional lives. He has worked in journalism, national security, political commentary, classroom teaching, and historical fiction, and those worlds all leave tracks in his writing. He is also the son of W. Cleon Skousen, so he grew up close to big arguments about American history, government, faith, and public life.

His path into authorship was anything but narrow.

He studied journalism at Brigham Young University and later earned a master's degree in national security studies from Georgetown University. That combination, reporter on one side, policy and strategy on the other, helps explain why even his later books tend to mix storytelling with explanation. He is interested in how systems work, how ideas travel, and what ordinary people are supposed to do with large and intimidating subjects.

After graduate school, Skousen worked in Ronald Reagan's White House Situation Room and also served as an intelligence officer for the CIA. He later described other writing and reporting jobs with a lot of self-deprecating humor, but this period gave him direct experience with government at close range. One of the strangest episodes from those years became part of his public story, when he preserved a bag of shredded top secret documents from the Iran-Contra era and sold pieces of the "shredded secrets from the White House."

That is not the usual route into a writing career.

His nonfiction books show where many of his core interests settled. The Naked Socialist lays out his argument about the long history and recurring patterns of socialism. How to Read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, How to Save the Constitution, and The Federalist Papers Made Easier all try, in different ways, to make foundational American documents easier to read without turning them into homework. Readers who like Skousen usually respond to that practical, teaching-first approach. He wants to explain the text, define the terms, and move people from vague opinions to close reading.

He did not stay in nonfiction. In the Bassam novels, beginning with Bassam and the Seven Secret Scrolls and continuing through Zafir and the Seventh Scroll and The Search for Rasha, he turns to ancient trade routes, desert travel, caravans, leadership, danger, and first love. Those books feel connected to another part of his life too. Skousen has interviewed political and military figures in Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, and that long interest in the region shows up in the texture of the setting, the travel details, and the attention he gives to power, diplomacy, and survival.

Another part of his catalog leans toward Latter-day Saint history and reference, including The Skousen Book of Mormon World Records and Treasures from the Journal of Discourses. He has also revised and edited several of his father's books, among them Fantastic Victory, The Cleansing of America, The Five Thousand Year Leap Glenn Beck Edition, and The Majesty of God's Law. That editorial work matters because it helps place him not just as an independent author, but as someone carrying forward and reshaping a family line of political and religious publishing.

Along the way, he has written columns, taught communications and journalism at Utah Valley University, and kept working as a speaker and Constitution instructor. At home, he and his wife, Kathy Bradshaw Skousen, are parents of ten children. The official bios and old personal pages often present him with a wink, piling up odd jobs, travels, and jokes, but the steady thread is easy to spot. He likes big subjects, practical lessons, and stories that ask what people do with freedom, responsibility, and power.