Utah Books

Utah and the Mormons is an early history of the Mormons printed in 1854 and based on the travels of Benjamin G. Ferris to the Great Salt Lake Valley. While containing many Mormon falsehoods and common misconceptions held by non-members of the time, it does contain some very interesting history. Included are line sketches of some of the locations along the Mormon trail, the Salt Lake valley, and early pioneer buildings. It also contains a first person account (quoting Willard Richards) of the Prophet Joseph Smith's assassination in Carthage. This is the less-familiar version of the assassination that includes references to having a small caliber pistol and firing back at the armed mob. The author takes a rather dim view of poligamy and much of the book is dedicated to casting this practice in a rather unfavorable light. He concludes the book with a prediction as follows: "Mormonism has probably passed its culminating point, and may reasonably be regarded as in the afternoon of its existence."

Bottom Line: Interesting read, full of historical inaccuracies, with many historical gems nestled in between.

Nice overview of historic and contemporary Utah artists. Pretty good selection of color plates, with some black and whtite illustrations.

great pictures, many I have never seen. Gives a good feel for this part of Normandy. Text is limited but useful.

Known variously as "Buchanan's Blunder," the "Mormon War," and the "Contractor's War," the U.S. Army's expedition to Utah during 1857-1858 was a significant event for all involved. The republishing of the documentary history of this important military operation is also significant, for it makes available once again an impressive collection of key documents. Originally issued in 1958, this account--while neither exhaustive nor fully representative of the extensive records available--contains many valuable official records and an impressive sampling of privately held documents.

The editors, LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann B. Hafen, both members of the Mormon church and acclaimed as leading authorities of frontier America, arrange the material into eleven chapters touching upon the most critical issues of the expedition. They provide the general orders which authorized the expedition; an account of the mission of Captain Stewart Van Vliet, sent to Utah to scout the territory and acquire necessary provisions for the army; the reports of Colonel Edmund B. Alexander, the senior officer of the advance troops destined for Utah; the diaries of members of the expedition; documents bearing upon Albert Sidney Johnston's movement into winter quarters at Fort Bridger; the reactions of the Mormons and Congress to the expedition; Thomas L. Kane's effort to negotiate a settlement; Governor Alfred Cumming's reports and correspondence concerning the affair; and documents dealing with the Utah Peace Commission.

The Hafens have chosen their documents well and have annotated them to provide additional background information. Annotation prevents the over-editing which has caused many documentary collections to suffer. This modest and fair appraisal of the controversial expedition is also still as valid today as it was when first published twenty-seven years ago. Yet although the Hafens have avoided over-editing, there are hazards to under-editing as well. On this point The Utah Expedition could have benefited from additional work. For instance, the editors chose to ignore the immediate causes of friction between the United States government and the people of Utah. The only apparent reasons for this military operation are those described in the letters of federal officials W.F.M. Magraw and W.W. Drummond, which unnecessarily charged the Mormons with open rebellion against the United States. The editors reproduce these without introduction or annotation. As a result, the expedition seems to take place without justification. The editors also make no attempt to document the important political implications of the expedition, such as the intriguing way in which Senator Stephen A. Douglas used the expedition to political advantage. The Buchanan administration's secrecy concerning this expedition also led to unfortunate suppositions from the Mormons, and this misunderstanding and confusion combined to create a volatile situation. Documentary evidence to demonstrate the reasons behind the administration's approach would have been helpful.

It is also regrettable that the editors did not extend their research into other collections that could have yielded still more valuable documents. In the National Archives, for example, is a letter dated 26 May 1857 from General-in-Chief Winfield Scott to Secretary of War John B. Floyd in which Scott recommended postponing the campaign until 1858 because of logistics and the hazards of winter in the Rockies. Thus Scott correctly anticipated the army's most serious difficulties during the expedition. The letter of instruction of 29 June 1857 from Scott to Brevet Brigadier General William S. Harney is also an important document which could have benefited this collection, for it describes clearly the mission's problems and suggests tactical movements. Finally, the editors might have included some of the documents in the Indian War Veterans Collection of the Utah State Archives in Salt Lake City. This collection contains dozens of manuscripts which portray the Utah militia's operations during this period. Perhaps the most important of these was Special Order Number 13 issued by the militia's commander on 13 August 1857; it directed a cavalry force of more than three hundred men "to go back upon the road [in Echo Canyon, the principal route into Utah] to protect our immigration now en-route to this city."

In spite of these criticisms, "The Utah Expedition" continues to stand as a notable achievement. The elements of the adventure-the expedition's initial activities, the reactions in Congress and in Utah, the Mormon efforts at resistance, Thomas Kane's heroic conciliation mission, Governor Cumming's good intentions, and the final settlement--all find illustration in well-selected journals, letters, government documents, and newspaper accounts.

I love this book. If I didn't live in Utah it would make me want to visit. The pictures are beautiful and the text is very well written.
I just bought 5 of these books to give to some visitors who are coming to Utah from China (had to buy one for myself as well).

Vampire bats, like few other animals, capture our attention for both pragmatic and aesthetic reasons, and this readable little book does justice to the animal itself as well as human interest in them. I especially like the love-hate balance that Dave Brown manages so nicely in his presentation and personal recollections, pointing up all the beauties of this unique little mammal while at the same time the horrors of the blook-sucking life style, both bat and human. Brown proves to be not only a good student of the biology of wildlife but also of humans, which makes this book a must for anyone interested in how nature affects human culture and societies, and vice versa.

Fritz Stern has compiled a wide-ranging collection of original source materials written by historians, ancient and modern, that illuminate the nature of history as a discipline and a process. Beginning with Voltaire and Barthold Niebuhr and progressing through Macaulay, Jaures, Turner, Trevelyan, Beard, Barzun, and ending with C. Vann Woodward, Stern focuses on different roles history has assumed over a period of thousands of years as well as the various genres and subtopics in which history has made itself a home. These topics include cultural history, economic history, literature, positivism, materialism, scientific history, relativism and others. Stern opens each chapter and discussion of a new historian with insightful preliminary and background information that helps to set the historian in a better context than if it were not to appear. Other than this, his presence is undetectable, which speaks to his ability as a historian himself to remain detached from his work.

Any university level historiography course needs this work either as a main text or as a supplementary text given its survey-like nature. Stern opens each chapter and discussion of a new historian with insightful preliminary and background information that helps to set the historian in a better context than if it were not to appear. Each featured historian presents or engages a new variety of history, as the title enunciates, and provides further evidence of the depth and breadth of history as a scholarly subject as well as a process spread out over time.

The intense and quite complex nature of the selections make this book a perfect fit for an upper level university or graduate level historiography course. Furthermore, any reader who wishes to supplement any knowledge of history would be well served by this work. High school students intending to pursue history as a major might also read this as a prelude to what lies ahead.

In the late 1970s, Colin Warren set out to circumnavigate the entire two-thousand-mile shoreline of Lake Powell in a canoe. Although his adventurous (and eventful) trip ended prematurely for a number of very justifiable reasons, the book that came out of that trip should suffer no such fate.
"Velvet Waters, Canyon Walls" is a rare photographic and literary look at Utah and Arizona's Lake Powell before it had ever completely filled. Before a white, calcite ring had encircled its entire shoreline. Before the debate over putting Lake Powell in Glen Canyon had reignited and become the heated topic it is today. The book is also unique in that it looks at Lake Powell, a spectacular although manmade reservoir, as a place worth being, as a place full of nature and wonder and the elements, not just as a water storage facility and a crime, as so many pro-Glen Canyon advocates would have people believe it is.
As the debate over Glen Canyon and Lake Powell heats up, I hope this book will find a new audience, and I hope Colin Warren is able to write a new chapter or two for it, in which he goes into more detail about his actual trip. It's a shame an excerpt from this book wasn't included in the recent anthology "The Glen Canyon Reader"; it would have been a perfect selection to represent Glen Canyon post-Glen Canyon Dam.

26 miles away from the Utah/Nevada border, stands a sculpture that motorist drive by to look at. I always asked people what the sculpture was about. Researching it, I found this book that explained the history and the artist associated with it. The sculpture always seemed mysterious to me driving by it and not knowing what the heck it was. It's not the best looking thing (a tree with tennis balls?) but knowing the history behind it finally helped me out. This a good book for my collection.

William Chandless was an Englishman who, in 1855, set out as a teamster, hired to travel to Salt Lake City. In this account of his travels, Chandless describes his journey across the Plains westward, as made by the emigrant and the cattle-driver of that time. The second part of the book is of a different subject and nature than the first. Chandless writes a chronicle of his meeting with the Mormons, his observations, and his opinions. An interesting first hand account of the early Western migration in the United States and of the unique society to be found in Utah at that time.