Davis Bitton

Brief Notices

Brief Notices

Anti-Intellectualism in Mormon History

Almost from its beginning Mormonism was disparaged as funda mentally superstitious and irrational, with an appeal only for the poor and uneducated. Even before the description of Joseph Smith as “ignorant” and “illiterate” by the…

Mormon Lives | No Author Given, Melvin J. Ballard: Crusader for Righteousness, and Robert H. Malan, B.H. Roberts: A Biography

Among Mormon leaders of the past generation few were as charismatic as Melvin J. Ballard and B. H. Roberts. Both, in different ways, were significant in the shaping of twentieth-century Mormonism. Both deserve solid biographies.…

B.H. Roberts as an Historian

In 1930, when B. H. Roberts published his six-volume Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, learned journals were silent. But he himself, with pardonable pride, had described his work as “monumental.” One Mormon, answering Bernard De Voto’s contemptuous description of Utah as an intellectual desert, hailed Roberts as “another Gibbon.” Although hyperbolic, the favorable judgment was in general well deserved….

Phrenology Among the Mormons

On 2 July 1842 the Nauvoo Wasp contained a letter from A. Crane, M.S., professor of phrenology, alluding to the “large number of persons in different places” who wished to know “the phrenological development of…

Illustrated Periodical Images of Mormons, 1850-1860

Image history—how the Mormons were viewed by others—has been a fruitful approach used by several historians during the past decade.

In Memoriam: T. Edgar Lyon (1903-1978)

T. Edgar Lyon, well known to a generation of students at the University of Utah Institute of Religion, died on September 20, 1978, at the age of 75. Born and reared in Salt Lake City,…

Polygamous Eyes: A Note on Mormon Physiognomy

Ruth Benedict perceptively observed: “The first lesson of history . . . is that when any group in power wishes to persecute or expropriate another group, it uses as justification, reasons which are familiar and…

Ten Years in Camelot: A Personal Memoir

Between 1972 and 1982 I was part of the team of historians located in the Church Office Building under the direction of Leonard J. Arrington. It was a golden decade—a brief period of excitement and…

Universalizing Mormonism: The Mexican Laboratory | F. LaMond Tullis, Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture

The appearance of Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture is cause for celebration. For one thing, an other volume in the beleaguered sesquicentennial series sees the light of day, accompanied by a…