Dennis L. Lythgoe

DENNIS L. LYTHGOE {[email protected]} grew up in Salt Lake City, where he took BA, MA, and PhD degrees in history from the University of Utah. He was a professor of history for twenty years, and chair of the Department of History (four years) at Bridgewater State University, near Boston, Massachusetts; he was later adjunct professor of history at the University of Utah, while acting as columnist and book review editor at the The Deseret News for twenty more years. He has authored six books, the best known of which is Let ‘Em Holler! A Political Biography of J. Bracken Lee, published by Utah Historical Society, 1982. He has also written numerous articles in professional journals about US western, US political, and Mormon history.

Marketing the Mormon Image:An Interview with Wendell J. Ashton

Articles/Essays – Volume 10, No. 3

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Review: The Dean of Mormon History”: One Viewpoint Gregory A. Prince. Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History

Articles/Essays – Volume 49, No. 4

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The Changing Image of Mormonism

Articles/Essays – Volume 03, No. 4

The ultimate fate of American minorities is to become tourist attractions. . . . But the tourist boom means the same thing in Utah that it means in Vermont, the same thing it means wherever the past has been piously “restored,” roped off, and put on display—not the vitality but the decadence of a way of life.
Such is the devastating indictment of Mormonism by Christopher Lasch in the January 26, 1967, New York Review of Books

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Mormonism in the Nineteen-Seventies: The Popular Perception

Articles/Essays – Volume 10, No. 3

Perhaps more than the members of any other religious sect, Mormons are preoccupied with their public image. It may be argued that such preoccupation is a form of narcissism unworthy of the Restored Gospel, but…

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Artful Analysis of Mormonism | James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints

Articles/Essays – Volume 10, No. 4

Since its 1922 publication, Joseph Fielding Smith’s Essentials in Church History has been regarded by Mormons as the standard one volume account. Even though it was continually expanded and updated through 28 editions (most recently…

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A Special Relationship: J. Bracken Lee and the Mormon Church

Articles/Essays – Volume 11, No. 4

J. Bracken Lee, a non-Mormon in an overwhelmingly Mormon state, became its most colorful and controversial politician with probably a greater impact on his state and the nation than any Utah figure since Brigham Young.…

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Battling the Bureaucracy: Building a Mormon Chapel

Articles/Essays – Volume 15, No. 4

Excessive multiplication of bureaus results in a bureaucracy, which we may define as any administration in which the need to follow complex procedures impedes effective action. A bureaucrat usually works by fixed routine without exercising…

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