Review
Title: Writing Mormon History: Historians and Their Books
Editor: Joe Geisner
Publisher: Signature Books
Genre: Memoir, History
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 420
Binding: Cloth; Paper; Ebook
ISBN: Cloth, 978-1560852810; Paper, 978-1560852827; Ebook, (ASIN) B085QN2LWW
Price: Cloth, 34.95; Paper, 19.95; Ebook 8.99
Reviewed by Andrew Hamilton for the Association for Mormon Letters
After we have enjoyed a movie together, my family loves to watch the DVD “Extras”: the deleted and extended scenes, the bloopers and outtakes, the director’s commentaries, and the making of featurettes, we love them all. We have had great fun over the years learning about how movies make lightsabers glow, superheroes fly, and cars travel through time. From Oscar winners to the razziest of the Razzie’s, nearly every movie that comes out on DVD has such extras. As much as I love a good movie, I REALLY love a good book. As I read, I often wonder about the “behind the scenes story” for the book that I hold in my hands. Since books don’t come with “extras,” I have been out of luck, until now. In “Writing Mormon History: Historians and Their Books” editor Joe Geisner and fifteen brilliant authors have given us the gift of an entire book of “behind the scenes featurettes” for some of the most vital books of Mormon history ever published.
Joe’s journey to create “Writing Mormon History” started in 1977. That’s when, as a vacationing 17-year-old, Geisner casually walked off of the streets of Salt Lake City into the LDS Church office building and asked to meet Church Historian Leonard Arrington. Arrington met with Joe and answered his questions. That meeting started the young Mr. Geisner on a trek that led to him meeting and befriending almost every cool author, publisher, editor, and speaker on Mormon history that has been alive since that time. Utilizing those friendships and connections, Geisner put together “Writing Mormon History,” a fascinating collection of “author’s commentaries” by a “Who’s Who” of award-winning Mormon history authors. If there has been a book in the last 40 years that changed our understanding of Mormon history, there is a good chance that the author of said volume recorded their story for Joe. Here are a few thoughts on the fifteen essays in this fascinating volume.
Polly Aird is the author of “Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector,” one of the most captivating and unusual Mormon biographies you could ever read. In her essay, Aird recounts the story of the McAuslan family’s trip to and then away from “Zion” and how she came to tell it. Aird’s essay is fascinating and was the perfect choice to start this collection. As Aird researched the McAuslans she encountered many twists and shocks, including learning that much of the family history passed on by her grandmother was wrong. Aird’s essay starts “Writing Mormon History” with the important reminder that the truth is not always what we expect it to be. If you are considering writing a biography, read Aird’s essay, it is the perfect first lesson on how to write an award winner.
Will Bagley’s essay, “History Never Stops,” provides insights and facts about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and his process of writing “Blood of the Prophets.” This essay had me enthralled; it is captivating from beginning to end. I won’t give any spoilers, but I will throw out one wild detail. In 1995 Bagley was hired by Mormon millionaire Frank Singer to research the Massacre. For about four years, Bagley had a dream job. Then Singer experienced business setbacks that led to federal tax charges. One day in June of 1999, Bagely got a call saying that Singer had departed his office and disappeared without a trace! Bagely was then left on his own to figure out how to finish the book and get it published.
Two related essays come next. In “Plural Accidents: Writing ‘In Sacred Loneliness,'” Todd Compton tells the story of how he wrote what is still the most important book that you can read on Joseph Smith’s polygamy. When his book was published in 1997, writing about Smith’s polygamy was taboo. Because he published a major book on a subject that the LDS Church wished would just go away, Compton, like many of the other authors in this collection, took a lot of heat after his book was released. But “In Sacred Loneliness” paved the way for new writers, including Brian Hales, to write on Smith’s polygamy. “Plural Accidents” is a fascinating and very personal essay on how this influential and life-changing book came to be. Hales’ essay, “Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology” follows Compton’s and tells of how Hales and Don Bradley amassed a collection of over 10,000 pages of polygamy related documents that have allowed Hales to write his multiple volumes on the subject.
After you get your first lesson on writing a biography from Polly Aird, you will get your second lesson from Melvin C. Johnson in his chapter “Writing Mormon History.”[i] Johnson, a retired college professor, gives you the hard lessons on how to write an engaging biography. He does this while telling you about how he wrote the story of the first Mormon temple completed west of the Mississippi. And no, that temple wasn’t in Utah, it was in Texas.
All that I want to say about “Enlisted for the Duration: Discovering the Utah War, Writing ‘At Sword’s Point’” by William P. Mackinnon is that you have to experience it. In his sixty-plus years of research, Mackinnon has written THE most important books and essays on the Utah War. What he discovered and published in that time redefined and changed everything that we knew about the Utah War. If you have not read Mackinnon then you do not know what really happened in this crucial episode of Mormon history. This brief essay tells you the story about how these seminal works came to be.
Without the groundbreaking work of Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, the other authors in “Writing Mormon History” would have had a much harder time accomplishing what they have. When Newell and Avery published “Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith” in 1984, they blazed a trail that changed Mormon historical studies. But creating that trail came at a high price. In “Living the Journey, Reaping the Whirlwind: Reflections on Writing Emma Hale Smith’s Biography,” Linda King Newell tells of how she and Avery blazed the trail that all Mormon Historians that came after them have been able to travel. It was a journey that came with as great a personal cost as the pioneer journeys of the past. I wept as I read in this essay of the abuse and suffering that were inflicted upon Newell and Avery because they wanted to tell the story of Emma Hale Smith accurately. It is hard for me to pick a favorite chapter in this book. But for some reason, if you were only going to read one essay in the whole collection, if I had to pick one and call it “required reading” for every Mormon, Newell’s contribution would be that one. I want to share one fascinating bit of trivia that I learned from this essay. Thirty-six years after its initial release, “Mormon Enigma” continues to sell about a thousand copies a year. This means that “Mormon Enigma” is officially the “Dark Side of the Moon”[ii] of Mormon Studies!
If you enjoy “Deleted Scenes” and “Director Commentaries,” then you will love “How I Did It: Writing David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism” by Greg Prince and “On Writing Mormon History, 1972–95: From the Diaries and Memoirs of D. Michael Quinn”. Prince’s essay is packed full of fun stuff that he learned about McKay as he conducted hundreds of hours of interviews and poured through thousands of pages of McKay’s diaries. Quinn’s chapter is sure to be one of your favorites as it provides all sorts of behind the scenes stories of meetings and interactions with general authorities and key personnel in those crucial early years of the “New Mormon History.”
Craig Smith’s contribution, “The Publication History of Juanita Brooks’s ‘Dudley Leavitt: Pioneer to Southern Utah,’” is different than the rest of the essays in “Writing Mormon History” in that it focuses on the publication history of the four printings Brooks’s “Dudley Leavitt” book. In this essay, you will learn such things as: how many copies of the book were printed in each edition, how much each printing cost, who was involved in getting them to press, etc. If that kind of information interests you, then you will love Smith’s essay. However, if you were hoping for new insights on Leavitt or if you wanted to learn more about Brooks, her writing process, and what happened to her because she wrote the book, that is not in this essay. It is an expertly written essay; it just has a much different focus than the rest of the book.
While George Smith’s essay “Pursuing Four Forgotten Chapters of Mormon Frontier Experience” is very interesting, it also left me feeling a little disappointed. I teach English 101 at the local college. A common problem in my student’s early essays is that they choose subjects that are too broad. The resulting essays lack focus and leave out necessary details. The maxim my grandmother used was that they “bit off more than they could chew.” That was how I felt about Smith’s essay. In the first seventeen pages, he discusses four of his books and their sometimes-controversial subject matter[iii]. In those pages, I counted at least eighteen of what I considered to be major shifts in the subject being addressed.[iv] It is fascinating stuff, but the constant subject changes made me feel like I was on a rollercoaster ride. Just as a subject gets interesting, the essay moves on. It was hard to tell when Smith was leaving out details as if he was doing it to tease the reader into reading his books or when he was possibly leaving out details to influence the reader to accept his version of a historical event.
As an example, there were places in the essay where the missing details and rapidly changing subjects also involved somewhat biased language. In describing the arrest and death of Joseph Smith, George Smith writes that he was:
taken to the jail in nearby Carthage where, on June 27, he, joined by his older brother Hyrum, died in a gunfight (p. 297).
Yes, technically speaking, since Joseph Smith fired a gun at the people attacking him, it COULD be said that he died in a gunfight. However, describing Smith’s death with those exact words provides the perfect example of how too many subjects without enough details can distort a reader’s understanding of history. Yes, Joseph Smith was in jail awaiting trial when he was killed. Yes, he did fire a gun, a six-shooter. BUT the perspective changes when you add the details that Smith left out. These details include that Joseph and his three companions were waiting in their room, in state’s custody, assuming they were protected when estimates of up to 200 men who wanted to lynch Joseph attacked the jail. During the “gunfight,” as many as sixty of those men stormed the jail to get Joseph and his three companions. The attackers fired from forty-five to fifty-five shots at Joseph and his companions compared to the three shots fired by Joseph. SO, yes, on one sense, it was a “gunfight,” but it was also a lynching. The missing details give readers an entirely different perspective than just saying that Joseph “died in a gunfight”[v].
While I have issues with the first portion of George Smith’s essay, I LOVED its last six pages, I wish that his whole essay had been an expansion of this section. Titled “A Personal Note,” this portion of Smith’s essay discusses the personal experiences that shaped who he is. I loved learning about Smith’s family and his experiences growing up. I was engrossed as he wrote about his coming of age in the Vietnam era and as he described the personal meetings that he had with LDS apostles Richard L. Evans and Gordon B. Hinckley as he debated with himself about going on a mission. These personal stories are beautifully insightful and gave me a better understanding of George Smith and his books. Smith’s essay would have been much more helpful to me if this section had been expanded on and made the focus of his contribution to the book.
As “Mormon Historians” begins to wrap up, three very personal stories are told. As “To Hell in a Handbasket: My Journey to Find the Truth About the Angel and the Brass Plates,” begins, Vickie Cleverley Speek is searching for basket weaving materials. When she happens upon a street named “Mormon Road” in Burlington, Wisconsin, she unknowingly starts on a journey that leads her to write about James J Strang and completely changes her life. It is a bittersweet and poignant essay that, like so many others in the volume, reminds us that there is a cost to discovery and finding the truth.
Susan Staker is one of the important foremothers of the New Mormon History. In “An Accidental Church Historian: On the Trail of a Book of Joseph,” she narrates her history and gives readers an important and vital overview of how Mormon historical studies has grown and changed from the late 1970s to now.
Daniel Stone is the newest and youngest historian in “Writing Mormon History.” He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ, sometimes called “The Bickertonites.” He is forging the same trail in his corner of Mormonism that the early New Mormon Historians created in theirs. His essay helps to wrap up the book and is an excellent lead into John Turner’s because both essays emphasize the importance of making connections with other historians and individuals when writing about history.
Just as Aird’s essay was the ideal opener for “Writing Mormon History,” John Turner’s “Writing ‘Brigham Young’” was the best choice to conclude the collection. Turner brings a unique perspective to the book as he describes what it was like to explore the life of Brigham Young as a non-Mormon. I loved one statement that he made in particular as it brought to focus the idea of “connections” that was so common in the rest of the book:
The Mormon History Association … generates a sense of community unusual for an academic conference. The stereotype about Mormons being nice seemed to hold, but it turned out it also applied just as much to ex-Mormons and to almost everyone else who turns up at MHA or the Church History Library. (p. 382)
This quote succinctly encapsulates the “sense of community” that is in nearly every essay in the book. Almost every author told a story that connected them as a running thread in an interconnected cats-cradle of Mormon history authors [vi]. Writer “A” attends the Mormon History Association where they met Writer “B.” They then discover that Writer “B” presented with Writer “C” at the John Whitmer History Association or Sunstone. This inevitably allows for the sharing of some vital documents, or provides a necessary clue, or connects one of the authors with their publisher or some such service. Turner’s experience ends “Writing Mormon History” perfectly as he tie all of their threads together with a beautiful bow and showcases the sense of community that the other authors had described encountering in their work. Geisner could not have had a better ending for his book if he wrote it himself!
One of the great things that Signature Books has done with “Writing Mormon History” is that they have made versions to appeal to every kind of reader. “Writing Mormon History” comes in a cloth-bound version for the serious collector, a paperbound version for those who want a nice but economical copy, and there is even an eBook version for those readers who enjoy their new-fangled electronic gizmos. The cloth version is a BEAUTIFUL book and is a real steal at 34.95. As more and more readers have gone with digital rather than print copies of books, many publishers have cut corners to keep costs down. Many academic presses now glue their cloth books instead of sewing their signatures. Not so with “Writing Mormon History.” It is sewn together in the classic style, tightly and beautifully assembled, and made to last. The cloth cover has an extra special touch of having the names of the authors stamped in gilt on the front cover. The essays are footnoted (when used) and each one comes with a picture of the author. I don’t know if any organization gives an award for the best produced Mormon book, but if they do, “Writing Mormon History” should win it.
In “Writing Mormon History,” Joe Geisner and his all-star cadre of authors have given us a fun and amazing book of “extras” packed with nuggets, gems, and all sorts of cool stories and information. If you have read one of these author’s classics in Mormon history and wanted to know more or get the behind the scenes details of how these books came to be, than “Writing Mormon History” is the book of bonus features that you have been waiting for.
[i]If the “Book of Mormon” can have a “Book of Mormon” in it then I suppose that “Writing Mormon History” can have a “Writing Mormon History” in it!
[ii] Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” famously stayed on the Billboard album chart for 741 weeks from 1973 to 1988 and then recharted in 1991 and has spent over 950 weeks on the Billboard album charts. It continues to sell well in the 21st century.
[iii]. The four books that Smith discusses in his essay are: “Nauvoo Polygamy: ‘… But We Called It Celestial Marriage,” (2008, 2011); ” An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton” (1991, 1995); “Studies of the Book of Mormon” by BH Roberts edited by Brigham D Madsen (1985, 1992); and his forthcoming “Brigham Young, Colonizer of the American West: Diaries and Journals, 1832–1871” (2020).
[iv] The subjects Smith discusses include: The beginnings of Joseph Smith’s polygamy, polygamy being forbidden by the “Book of Mormon,” the origins and story of the “Book of Mormon,” Joseph Smith’s marriage to Louisa Beaman, the history of LDS D&C 132, The Partridge sisters, Fanny Alger, Brigham Young’s early practice of Polygamy, Nauvoo Polygamy, John C Bennett, William Law, the Expositor, the Martyrdom of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young’s journey west, the colonization and design of Utah, Brigham Young’s Utah practice of polygamy, changes to the word of wisdom over the years, and various issues surrounding BH Roberts
[v] The details that I mention can be found in several sources, but most succinctly in Lyon & Lyon. “Physical Evidence at Carthage Jail and What It Reveals about the Assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.” BYU Studies, Vol 47, No 4, 2008. Accessed on 7-20-20 at scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3961&context=byusq
[vi] I fully admit to stealing this metaphor from the amazing Chieko N. Okazaki. See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1993/04/cats-cradle-of-kindness?lang=eng