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Articles/Essays – Volume 01, No. 1
Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature
Many of our subscribers have asked to have a bibliographical column included as a regular feature of Dialogue. The first of such columns has been written by our assistant book review editor, who is the Archivist and Manuscripts Librarian at Stanford University; on a selective basis, he has used as his main source the bibliography Mormon Americana, which is distributed semi-monthly by the Brigham Young University Library primarily for the benefit of libraries that have an interest in Mormon literature. He has excluded many of the works published by Bookcraft and Deseret Book which are already well advertised in The Improvement Era and The Church News, but some of these will be given short critical reviews in a book notes section, beginning next issue.
The present review (as will be the custom in each Spring issue) deals with books, pamphlets, records, and photo-reproductions published during the past year. In each Summer issue we will be concerned with dissertations on Mormon subjects and in the Winter issue we will review articles from various journals, thus covering the entire bibliographical spectrum annually. Future columns will contain fuller annotations of the works surveyed than was possible for this issue. We welcome any suggestions for the column. [Ed.]
During the past year Mormon theology has occasioned a number of works several of which, evidently lacking salability, have been privately printed by the authors or have been undertaken by smaller presses whose costs are subsidized by the authors. Those that have come to our attention are Wesley M. Jones’s A Critical Study of the Book of Mormon Sources (Detroit, Mich., Harlo Press, 1964, $4.50) , Robert J. Mathews’s A Look at Joseph Smith’s Inspired Transiation (502 East 2950 North, Provo, Utah), and Ronald G. Luker’s Makings of an Apostate (852 East 8th South, Salt Lake City, Utah) . Subject matter in the books is obvious from the titles; however, biographical information about the authors is lacking. Hyrum L. Andrus, of the Brigham Young University faculty has authored a timely study, Liberalism, Conservatism, and Mormonismi (Deseret Book, $1.95) , which will be reviewed in these pages as will The Theo logical Foundations of the Mormon Religion* by Sterling M. McMurrin (University of Utah Press, $3.00, paper $2.00) .
It is not very often that the L.D.S. Church, which has its headquarters in Utah, gives one of the other churches originating from Joseph Smith its attention, but evidently the Church of the First Born, which disrupted the French Mission some years ago and has met with some success in the Great Basin, is continuing to capture adherents. An answer to this group’s attack may be found in Henry W. Richard’s A Reply to ” The Church of the Firsthorn of the Fulness of Times ” (Deseret News Press, $1.75, paper $1.00). On the other hand, beliefs of “Utah Mormons” are subject to scrutiny in The Truth and the Evidence; A Comparison between Doctrines of the Reorganized Church . . . and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , by Aleah G. Koury (Independence, Missouri: Herald House, $1.50) .
Placing the Church in the context of American religions in general is Mil ton V. Backman’s American Religions and the Rise of Mormonism* (Deseret Book, $3.75) . In passing we call your attention to the Papers of [the] Fifteenth Annual Symposium on the Archaeology of the Scriptures * edited by Ross T. Christensen (Brigham Young University, $1.00) , and a well-received work by John Reps, The Making of Urban America, a History of City Planning . One chapter of this work deals with Nauvoo and Salt Lake City.
Since the pioneer Mormon community of Nauvoo was declared a national historic landmark, it was only a matter of time before a full length history would appear. Robert B. Flanders of the Reorganized Church’s Graceland College at Lamoni, Iowa, wrote his dissertation for the University of Wisconsin on Nauvoo, and now the University of Illinois has pubulished it as Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi* (Urbana, $6.50) . Additional works about Nauvoo have been published by Nauvoo Restorations, Inc. (P.O. Box 215, Nauvoo, Illinois) . Titles for 1965 are The Heber C. Kimball Home, The James Ivins[-] Elias Smith Printing Complex and The Nauvoo Temple, 1841-1865. A related pamphlet by Ora Haven Barlow, Family Recordings of Nauvoo – 1845 and Before, including minutes of the first Latter-day Saints gathering, is available from Stanway Printing Co. of Salt Lake City, Utah ($1.00, 48 pp.) .
When the Saints left Nauvoo a small group followed James J. Strang to Michigan and eventually ended up on Beaver Island. Murder on Beaver Island by Phil Weygand is the latest of a number of recent publications about the Strangites (Dundee, Michigan, privately printed in a limited edition) . The Beaver Island Historical Society has added to sources of Latter-day Saints history by reprinting a 1905 memoir of Elizabeth Whitney Williams, A Child of the Sea; and Life among the Mormons ($3.50, available from Zion’s Book store in Salt Lake City).
This past year has seen the publication of a number of books about Utah and that portion of the Great Basin of particular interest to Mormons. Gregory C. Crampton completed his four-part study of Glen Canyon with Historical Sites in Cataract and Narrow Canyons, and in Glen Canyon to California Bar (University of Utah Anthropological Series #72, 1964). During 1965 Gustave O. Larson brought out a revised third edition of his Outline History of Utah and the Mormons (Deseret Book, $4.50).
Many years ago Percival G. Lowe published his memoirs under the title Five Years a Dragoon and Other Adventures on the Great Plains. Lowe was a teamster for the army supply trains during the Utah War of 1857-58. Thanks to the reprint series of the University of Oklahoma Press, this scarce work is again available (Norman, $5.95). Since television has given some respectability to Jesse James, we will honor Utah’s contribution to crime – Butch Cassidy – by citing a new book about the “wild bunch,” Pearl Baker’s The Wild Bunch at Robbers Roost (Los Angeles, Westernlore Press, $7.50). A biography by Claton Rice which we have not seen but which apparently pertains to Utah is Ambassador to the Saints, published by The Christopher Publishing House (Boston) . Could this be about Christian missionary activity in Utah? P. A. M. Taylor, the eminent English authority on Mormonism, has recently written Expectations Westward; the Mormons and the Emigration of their British Converts in the Nineteenth Century * (Clarke Irwin and Company, Ltd., Canada, or Oliver and Boyd, Ltd., England, $10.00).
Nevada Mormonism is incidentally treated in The Nevada Adventure by James Hülse (University of Nevada Press, $7.50) and Leon L. Loofbourow’s Steeples Among the Sage; A Centennial Story of Nevada’s Churches (San Francisco Historical Society, California-Nevada Annual, 330 Ellis Street, San Francisco, $2.50) . Works of interest on transportation in Mormon Country include Granville M. Dodge’s How We Built the Union Pacific Railway and Other Railway Papers and Addresses (Denver, Sage Books, $5.00, paper $2.50). Fascination with the story of riverboat travel on the Colorado has fostered a collection edited by Alexander Crosby, Steamboat up the Colorado (Boston, Little Brown, $4.50) . Readers who haven’t the time or durability to personally explore historic locales can perhaps make an armchair visit by using The Travelers Guide to Historic Mormon America by Don R. Oscarson and Stanley B. Kimball (Bookcraft, $1.95).
Since 1958 the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers has published Our Pioneer Heritage , successor to the annual compilation Heart Throbs of the West. Volume seven of the new series is now available. Of limited scholarly value due to a lack of documentation, this series nevertheless offers rich sources of otherwise unavailable original narratives. Of more than passing interest because of current events is the printed DUP lesson for May, 1965, The Negro Pioneer. Another work of specialized interest, but certainly long overdue, is James L. Haseltine’s 100 Years of Utah Painting (Salt Lake Art Center, 54 Finch Lane, Salt Lake City, Utah, $3.50) .
Works of fiction about Utah and the Mormons are much more prevalent than many of us realize. However, much of this fiction is of the Zane Grey variety. Gunsmoke over Utah , by Bevit Arthur (Belmont, $.40), is a case in point. It shall not be our intention to use the columns of this section to review fiction unless the book is of the stature of Rodello Hunter’s House of Many Rooms * (Knopf, $4.95) . Nor shall we be concerned with business and eco nomics unless the appeal transcends the usual limitations of the subject. By way of illustration the Utah Foundation’s Statistical Abstract of Government in Utah (Salt Lake City, $2.00) and the brief study by Leonard J. Arrington and George Jensen, The Defense Industry of Utah (Utah State University, 50 pp.) , have appeal to more than a local readership.
Microfilm, Xerox and other forms of photo-duplication have made possible inexpensive reproductions of out-of-print or rare books and newspapers. As far as the L.D.S. Church is concerned, such photo-publications are a mixed blessing. Jerald Tanner of Modern Microfilms (Salt Lake City, Utah) has used photo-publications to reproduce early Church and anti-Church works in wholesale lots. Mr. Tanner’s object is to embarrass the Church to which he at one time gave allegiance. His reproductions are often as weak as his motives for doing them. Of greater interest is the History of Brigham Young , 1847- 1867 , a reproduction of three manuscripts in the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley. Produced by MASSCAL Associates, in limited numbers, the original has heretofore been available only at the Ban croft.
We cannot conclude this column without mentioning two new records that have come to our attention. Columbia Records has recently issued The Mormon Pioneers* (LS 1024) with a handsomely illustrated attached introduction. If you are among the few who have never heard a J. Golden Kimball tale, then the new Folk-legacy record (Huntington, Vermont) is just what you need. /. Golden Kimball Stories Together with the Brother Peterson Yarns told by Hector Lee complements Chapter seventeen of the Fife’s Saints of Sage and Saddle. Tom Lehrer notwithstanding, Kimball stories are what every Latter day Saint needs to put his life in perspective.
*Books to be reviewed in Dialogue will be indicated with an asterisk.