Book Reviews

Edited and with an introduction by MONROE LEE BILLINGTON and ROGER D. HARDAWAY (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1998. x + 275 pp. $24.95.)

This book is a collection of fourteen essays/articles written byvarious scholars and authors over the past twentyfive years, with an emphasis on the period between 1850 and 1912. The book makes a significant contribution to the study of African American experiences on the western frontier While this book has some interest to historians and scholars, it has particular value for the general reader. It accomplishes its primary objective to "document and validate the African American frontier experience" as well as "to tell the complete story of the presence of African Americans on the western frontier" (2).

The goal of this book is to detail the contributions of African Americans toward the settlement and development of life in the western frontier of the United States. Essays such as "Slavery in the West," "Oklahoma's AllBlack Towns," and "American Daughters: Black Women In the West" add specific information on topics seldom addressed Each article deals with ofttimes-ignored and sometimes completely forgotten aspects of African American life. The editors have made the collection most valuable by tying the variety of subjects together through a focused introduction, a statement of intent, and the closing bibliographic essay

For those who live in Utah, "The Mormons and Slavery: A Closer Look," by Newell G. Bringhurst, and Michael Clark's "Improbable Ambassadors: Black Soldiers at Fort Douglas, Utah, 1896-1899" bring understanding of topics seldom known or studied The reader gets a much better sense of the challenges of slavery, of military cavalry and infantry, and of occupational roles

The photographs and figures provide the reader with a view of the rugged individuals and their living arrangements as they accepted the challenge to move westward. They permit the reader to put faces on such important personalities as Biddy Mason, Nat Love, Bill Pickett, and Allen Allensworth. The editors provide "American Daughters: Black Women in the West" and "Still in Chains: Black Women in Western Prisons, 1865-1910," two excellent pieces on the roles and participation of women on the western frontier Still, many of the more creative roles of women in community-building require much more research

Unfortunately, this work leaves for further research two primary yet vital areas First, although the book contains "The Development of African American Newspapers in the American West, 1880-1914," this essay has little or nothing to say about many papers, such as the Broad-Ax and the Plain Dealer, and it has absolutely nothing about the Western Light. Many readers would want to know more about the important role newspapers played in black communications networks and in the encouragement of literacy.

Second, the African American churches, which are the premier institutions beyond the family, get only the attention provided in William L Lang's "Helena, Montana's Black Community, 1900-1910." The church's monumental role relates to all other facets of African American life, and it carried a significant burden in the developing western frontier. For example, the Zion Baptist Church of Denver, the Trinity African Methodist Church of Salt Lake City, the Saint Paul Baptist Church of Boise, and the Calvary Baptist Church of Salt Lake City have rich and long histories but are left for later study This is also true of other western areas with African American communities. This book whets the reader's appetite for more recent works like Quintard Taylor's In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990. It will have important use to those teachers and students of American history wanting to gain a better understanding of blacks in the West. It is enjoyable and informative.

FRANCE A DAVIS University of Utah/ Calvary Baptist Church

262 pp. $24.95.)

K. Douglas Brackenridge has written an excellent institutional account of one of Utah's important educational gems—Westminster College of Salt Lake City Anyone who visits or attends functions on the campus today, or who talks with students about their educational pursuits, is likely to be impressed with the small campus facilities and atmosphere, and the students seem to be favorably impressed with their college experience It is quite evident, after a reading of the early history of this institution, that, as President Charles H. Dick has said, what transpired "was just short of a miracle."

Professor Brackenridge has portrayed that story well, from the early antiMormon Presbyterian mission days to the present secular community college status. The author has done an excellentjob of putting the story into its historical context in the Mormon Utah setting, and he has accurately stated the relationship between the early struggling Presbyterian school and the dominant Mormon community

The history is well-researched and well-written The author has used a great many in-house, local, and national non-Presbyterian documents to see the overall and detailed picture

In a short book of 250 pages of text, divided into nine evenly spaced chapters, he moves the reader through the many episodes of the school's history. What seems to stand out is that in each era there was some individual or small group that brought the institution from the brink of disaster or closure and by devoted effort kept things going and moving along to the point of the apparent stability of today. This is in many ways a story about college heroes

The book recounts that, although today Westminster College of Salt Lake City is a private independent college, its roots were in Presbyterianism. This faith had come out of the early American period as one of the strong religions that emphasized the intellectual and its ties to religion By the time of the Civil War, the Presbyterian church had established forty-nine church-related colleges in the eastern United States. The developing West was an open field for expansion of Christian education, and although it contained only a small population, the region was a prime area of interest in which Native Americans, Hispanics, and Mormons needed conversion and cultural assimilation—and in Utah the Mormon polygamous culture needed special attention.

It was under these assumptions that the Presbyterian educational movement in Utah began and moved through its history The first three chapters recount the 1875 establishment of the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute by the Presbyterian church, which tried to draw Mormon children to Presbyterian elementary and high school programs and wean them away from their faith. Overall, this tactic did not work; the studentbody remained small, and the institute lacked funding.

Chapters 4 through 6 cover the establishment of the Sheldon Jackson College in 1895 and its successor, Westminster College, the 1902 naming of which still showed its Presbyterian relationship. These chapters tell of the move from a two-year college to a four-year baccalaureate program and the establishment of a permanent campus in the southeast sector of the city Chapter 5, "A Campus Without Students," shows how close the college came to closure when it had dropped to two full-time students and two faculty members. The depression years and competition from the state schools did much to keep student enrollment and funding low through these years, but the college hung on.

The final chapters describe hard times to the point where officials again considered closure and there were some resignations of administrators and faculty due to poor budgetary conditions, but there was a major turnaround in 1974, when the college ended its affiliation with the Presbyterian church In 1984 the college closed its doors for one day to make a break with the old institution and open as the new "Westminster College of Salt Lake City." All of this portended a new era, when endowments of considerable amounts solved the financial crises and put the college on an independent basis, which allowed it to appeal to the entire community, even the Mormon community In the epilogue, hopes and directions into the future are outlined.

Overall, Brackenridge has given us an excellent account of the history of this important educational institution in Utah. I find little to criticize in his work.

RICHARD C ROBERTS Weber State University, Emeritus

Edited by JAMES E SHEROW (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998 x + 310 pp Cloth, $60.00; paper, $19.95.)

This book is a collection of previously published articles from the late 1980s or early 1990s, so they are somewhat dated (one article states that it is drawn from a book that is "forthcoming" in 1987.) Following an introductory section on the writing of environmental history, the book is organized into three chronological sections: the period before "Anglo-American culture dominated the region" (viii); the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; and post-World War II.

There is no overarching theme or conceptual framework for this book. It consists of disparate chapters that roam widely across environmental history, which is broadly defined. The chapter topics range from the challenges that Indians faced in feeding their horses on the short-grass prairie to how Latinas in East Los Angeles developed their political identity This provides the reader with a great variety of topics and illustrates the breadth of thinking and research in environmental history. What the book lacks in cohesiveness it makes up in diversity of thought, approach, and time periods.

At the most basic level, this book is about adaptation: how people change the land, and vice-versa The most upto-date chapter in the book, and the most sophisticated conceptually, is the introductory chapter written by the editor. After a rather florid beginning ("The sun had slowly begun its descent to the west, nearly touching the line between earth and sky, and it lighted the northward-drifting dust in the air above in blazing streaks of yellows, oranges, purple, reds, and blues"), Sherow succinctly explains the relationship between western history and environmental history and then tackles the most pressing questions in ecology: the dualism of man and nature; the dialectic of nature, culture, and adaptation; and the nearly constant struggle between present needs and long-term sustainability. He also describes the unique qualities of western environmental history and how it reflects both the culture and the geography of the region.

The chapter that is most relevant to current environmental issues is undoubtedly Mark Harvey's discussion of the demise of the proposed Echo Park Dam He explains how the nascent environmental movement learned how to win political battles, and he shows how changing American values and a new generation provided the impetus for major revisions in both land and water policy.

It is fitting that the final section of the book contains two articles that deal with issues of environmental justice (although that term is not used in either). In chapter twelve, Brown and Ingram show how different cultures conceptualize water use in fundamentally different terms And chapter thirteen, by Mary Pardo, demonstrates how a group of "powerless" women— poor, minority, alienated, and ignored—discovered their political voice. The last subtitle in that chapter is "Transformation as a Dominant Theme"—a description that could be applied to all of the research in this book.

This book will be quite useful to those who want to begin to familiarize themselves with the amorphous field of environmental history It does not offer a compelling conceptual framework or represent new theory, but it provides an excellent introduction to the thinking of an inspired set of writers who help us understand how humankind has changed the West, and how the West has molded a unique culture.

DANIEL C MCCOOL University of Utah

By MICHAEL ALLEN (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998. xvi + 270 pp. $29.95.)

I grew up believing that the rodeo lifestyle I adopted as a teenager was part of an isolated culture that had registered as little more than a blip on the American imagination. In those days there was a vicious rift between cowboys, whose code did not allow them to grow their hair out, and the main-stream of pop culture, which was busy copying the look of the Beatles and every subsequent rock group that arrived on the scene with louder guitars and even longer hair It would still be a couple of years before Kieth Merrill's Oscar-winning Great American Cowboy was released in theaters nationwide and a full decade before John Travolta did the Texas-two-step across the silver screen in Urban Cowboy, when suddenly everything western became chic. It was not until I read Michael Allen's book Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination that I discovered what an important role the image of the rodeo cowboy has played in popular culture during the past century.

Allen's work is unique in that it is a book-length monograph on the history of the rodeo cowboy in popular culture, a topic even the author himself admits is not something the world has necessarily been clamoring for. Yet his study is extremely valuable—and should be so to more than just a select audience of academicians and a wider group of rodeo buffs—in providing us with a clue to the complex American mind As Allen puts it, "I believe that the fundamental problem of North American civilization is that of an agrarian people enduring the agony and the joy of industrialization and modernization. If a book about rodeo can somehow shed a little light on that paradox, then it is certainly worth the effort to write it."

For this reader it certainly was worth the effort. Michael Allen, who is associate professor of History and American Studies at the University of Washington, Tacoma, has looked at every imaginable facet of the connection between rodeo cowboys and popular culture He begins with an excellent brief history of rodeo In subsequent chapters he delves deeply into an analysis of how rodeo cowboys have been depicted in movies, television, folklore, literature, art, and country music He also examines the impact of commercialization and professionalization on rodeo, as well as the arrival on the rodeo scene of performers from outside the white, male, western, rural origins of the traditional cowboy. The result is an amazing overview explaining how rodeo cowboys have earned the place of "contemporary ancestor" and popular culture hero in America.

Though rodeo has never found its Mark Twain, Allen successfully shows us that the cowboy sport has been immortalized in such classic motion pictures as The Lusty Men, starring Robert Mitchum; Larry McMurtry's novel Moving On; Ian and Sylvia's song "Someday Soon"; Copland and deMille's ballet Rodeo; Michael Dorris's novel A YellowRaft in Blue Water; and John Avildsen's movie 8 Seconds. These are only a handful of examples Allen examines And what he concludes from it all is that in the second half of the twentieth century, the rodeo man has come to represent the most vibrant remaining form of traditional cowboy culture, painstakingly preserving and honoring cowboy traditions Allen writes, 'Whatever the form, the rodeocowboy hero will always be there He may not be the most important contemporary popular culture hero, but he is most certainly persistent."

Few writers have ventured into the incongruent realm of intellectualizing about rodeo. The author seems to have taken on this project as a labor of love, and his heartfelt commitment to the topic rears off every page like a bronc out of the chute His scholarship is superior; the book includes twentythree pages of detailed endnotes, a glossary of rodeo cowboy lingo, and an insightful bibliographical essay. I find next to nothing to quibble about in this book, which is why I hesitate to even mention just one thing. Allen refers to Chris LeDoux, the retired rodeo star turned country-rock music star, as a retired world saddle bronc champ In the broad context of this excellent book it seems trivial to point out that LeDoux did not ride saddle broncs. He rode bareback broncs. Yet, in the very esoteric world of the rodeo cowboy, this isjust the kind of subtle detail that might separate the "hand" from the "dude." In this case, however, Allen has long since established the fact that he is no dude when it comes to knowledge of rodeo. By his own admission, he is not a cowboy, but there is no question that he is a top "hand" in his field.

In 1974, Chris LeDoux came to St. George, Utah, to ride in the Dixie Roundup He drew the same Bar-T bareback bronc I had drawn the year before. In one of those rare encounters with greatness, I got to join him behind the chutes and pull his riggin' while I clued him in on his draw. He finished out of the money that night, but he headed on down the road and ended up placing third in the world that year with winnings of $25,740 Two years later he finally won the elusive buckle he'd been chasing for years. Chris LeDoux was crowned World Champion Bareback Bronc Rider in 1976, though he won less money that entire year than bareback bronc riders win in one go-round at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas today.

These days at any professional rodeo you'll see kids thrusting trading cards at their rodeo heroes for an autograph. Had there been cowboy trading cards a quarter century ago, I would likely still have a Chris LeDoux, aJoe Alexander, a Don Gay, or aJoe Marvel at the top of my stack For me, they endure as compelling heroes But I would have been hard-pressed to explain why until I read Michael Allen's book. He has aptly demonstrated that rodeo cowboys, more than any other popular culture hero, evoke a kind of rugged independence and solitary courage found nowhere else They are the modern embodiment of the spirit of the vanished frontier and of the hardy pioneers who conquered it.

LYMAN HAFEN Santa Clara, Utah

By VALEEN TIPPETTS AVERY (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. xiv + 357 pp. Cloth, $49.95; paper, $19.95.)

David Hyrum Smith (1844-1904) is especially significant to Latter-day Saints for complexly intermingled and profoundly intriguing reasons He was born about five months after his famous progenitor's June 27, 1844, murder He therefore was the last son in the biblically consequential patriarchal lineage of the founding Mormon prophet,Joseph Smith,Jr., and his wife Emma Hale Smith. David Hyrum was the only child born after their marriage covenant was solemnized in the Nauvoo Temple, which symbolically bestowed a unique status of enormous prominence upon him Many of the Saints, furthermore, believed that he had been prophetically blessed by his father for leadership, perhaps as a prophet.

The mythically Old Testament aristocracy into which he was born subsequently became divided, sometimes bitterly, between the two largest, rather contentious, factions of post-martyrdom Mormonism: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS); and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS) David was intimately connected by sacred kinship to the hierarchies of both organizations; and, on differing familial and theological grounds, he was exceptionally important to both of them. After his eldest brother, Joseph Smith III, accepted prophetic leadership of the Reorganization in 1860, David embodied the last and most prestigious hope for the LDS to attract a son of Joseph and Emma Smith to Utah Yet, out of both loyalty to his immediate family and sincere conviction, he joined the RLDS. David thereafter became an effective missionary in his brother's efforts to gather up the midwestern remnants of his father's religion, and he played a strategic role in the RLDS effort to wrest converts from Utah Mormonism. He eventually was called to the RLDS First Presidency (although he never served); ordinarily, David might have been expected to succeed Joseph Smith III as the RLDS prophet Valeen Tippetts Avery's engaging biography of David Hyrum Smith is skillfully researched, and it competently overcomes manifold difficulties with the pertinent sources. David's life was preserved selectively in his letters, poetry, and other writings, in various records of contemporaries, and in assorted histories A great deal of what is known about him is widely scattered and intertwined with observations, stories, and histories of other people and Latter-day Saint groups, much of which is only indirectly about him In spite of his mythic significance, there is (maybe surprisingly) little detailed information about David's early life, perhaps since he was sheltered from outsiders by his mother at Nauvoo. The surviving evidence, moreover, reveals only the main contours of his mental illness and last twenty-seven years, spent at the Northern Illinois Hospital and Asylum for the Insane.

Avery's scholarly narration masterfully pieces together these disparate elements, weaving them into a coherent story of this fascinating but mostly neglected Saint Her gentle interpretation more than adequately sustains the central thesis. David Hyrum's mental instability, she explains, substantially derived from the tremendous existential difficulties of reconciling his mother's personal understanding of early Mormonism, particularly her denial that the founding prophet originated and participated in plural marriage, with what David learned to the contrary from the Utah Saints. Avery's sensitive exploration of homosexuality (in her analysis, she rejects the likelihood of homosexualityin David's relationship with Charles Jensen), and her illuminating discussion of the LDS views of David and his conflictive relations with the RLDS are original and impressive. She might have fleshed out the end of David's life somewhat more, perhaps with amore detailed account of the story of his son and descendants as well as their continued RLDS participation Even so, Valeen Tippetts Avery's immensely insightful, scholarly biography of David Hyrum Smith greatly enhances our understanding of this tormented son of the founding prophet of the Latter-day Saints.

DANNY L JORGENSEN University of South Florida Tampa, Florida

Edited by S GEORGE ELLSWORTH (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1998 xxviii + 420 pp $29.95.)

Seldom can history buffs learn of important events and the day-to-day happenings in the lives of husband and wife written from both of their perspectives. Such dual records convey a richer contextual understanding of circumstances as they transpired. The Journals of Addison Pratt, edited by S George Ellsworth, appeared in 1990 Prior to his death, Ellsworth also completed editing the memoirs and journals of Pratt's wife, Louisa Barnes Pratt. This work is Volume 3 in a series, Life Writings of Frontier Women, edited by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher But it also must be welcomed as a companion to Ellsworth's earlier work Although the Pratts spent much of their married life apart, they shared some lifechanging experiences in their conversion to the LDS faith, missionary work in the Society Islands, and pioneering in California.

Through much of her complex life, Louisa Barnes Pratt kept a journal relating her experiences, musings, and reflections. These writings contain her inner conflicts and interpersonal disappointments and the private triumphs of her abiding faith During the 1870s she revised her writings into an autobiography and made intermittent additions to it until her death in 1880.

Born in Massachusetts, Louisa grew up there and in Canada. During the War of 1812 her father was pressed into the British services in spite of his instinctive loyalty to the United States Once grown, she lived the life of an independent young woman as a teacher and seamstress in New England. After marrying a Boston seaman, Addison Pratt, and having four daughters, she with her husband joined the LDS church in New York and followed the Saints to Nauvoo, Illinois AsAddison left for a mission to the Society Islands, Louisa and her daughters endured alone the usual trying experiences and deprivations of early church members until they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1848.

When Addison Pratt was called on a second mission to the islands, Louisa and family followed him She again had to drive her wagon alone, to San Francisco in the midst of the 1850 gold rush After an arduous voyage across the Pacific, including chronic seasickness, Louisa reached the island of Tubuai, where she taught the women and children for nineteen months while her husband was gone for extended periods preaching to the inhabitants of the surrounding islands.

Arriving back in San Francisco without funds following their mission, the Pratts engaged in various economic enterprises spawned by the influx of miners and soon left to settle in the Mormon colony of San Bernardino Addison filled two additional missions while Louisa again became sole support of the family. In 1858 she returned to Utah, without Addison, when an invasion of the territory by federal troops seemed imminent She settled in Beaver for the remainder of her life Except for one short visit by her husband, the couple never lived together again. She finished raising her daughters and an adopted son, provided for them by teaching school and raising stock and produce, served her neighbors, campaigned for women's rights, wrote articles published in the Woman's Exponent, and vehemently defended her church and its doctrines whenever the opportunity arose.

Ellsworth allows the reader to experience Louisa Pratt's life without undue intrusions. He skillfully incorporates original passages from herjournal into her revised memoir to add depth to her record His notes and excellent introduction offer additional pertinent information Although Louisa's laments often become tedious, one is compelled to wade through them all for fear that a special gem of her wisdom and insight might be missed.

This reviewer notes one omission by the series editor It would have been most helpful to the reader if maps had been provided. Louisa refers frequently to several New England and Eastern Canadian areas in her narrative. One also becomes confused by the mention of several locales in the Society Islands where the Pratts served In addition, Note #11 on page 376 is misplaced It should be inserted at the end of the succeeding paragraph But this aside, a series devoted to the writings of such remarkable women as Louisa Barnes Pratt is a salutary addition to the scholarship of America's western frontier

VIVIAN LINFORD TALBOT Weber State University

By BRYAN WATERMAN and BRIAN KAGEL. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998. xiv + 474 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

Some say two flags flew over the first Mormon settlement in Utah—Old Glory and the flag of Deseret— expressing deep impulses already owned and separated in the Constitution In private institutions such as Brigham Young Young University, that distinction is waived in favor of the expression of religion, which, we read in The Lord's University, quite naturally limits the freedoms of speech and press.

This interpretive history offers a painstaking account of clashes between religious orthodoxy and individual rights, especially in the last decade. An important historical context illuminates the sponsoring of education since pioneer times by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the church's concurrent suppression of women. The taut prose and exhaustive chapter notes honor academic and journalistic standards of objectivity as tension hums below the detailing of many a cultural "horror story."

Cleanly written and edited overall, the book contains one small error that matters here: BYU is not "straightlaced" but "strait-laced." The meaning of "strait" is narrow, tight, confined, as in "strait is the gate and narrow the way" or "straitjacket," in contrast to connotations of "straight-shooting," "straight-talking," or even "straightarrow." Perhaps the slip is Freudian, since orthodoxy and integrity each lend a tong to the metaphorical vise squeezing and squeezed by the individuals depicted herein.

The "two flags"mentality runs deep in the church's long nurture of a claim to superiority melded to a need for outside validation Before statehood, lesseducated Mormons claimed that, due to divinely revealed truth, their system was superior to those of more educated Protestants and Catholics BYU still claims superiority even as it courts secular brilliance Waterman and Kagel detail BYU regents and administrators touting the "culture war" pundits who defend the male, European tradition even as the Association of American University Professors sanctions BYU for violating academic freedom with recent firings.

Where instructors are evaluated on their "gospel insights" and "spiritual inspiration" as well as on their topical expertise and teaching skills, orthodoxy becomes a test Conversely, battles for individual expression erupt in the student newspaper and in campus demonstrations as well as in the classroom. Apparently, many life issues— even whole personalities?—are carved at BYU not by curricula or dogma but against the stone of collective opinion.

Although The Lord's University generally depicts the struggles of liberals against a conservative mainstream, some liberals, too, favor two flags but wish to interpret their colors. (Recently, a departing professor publicly hoped that, at the nearby Utah Valley State University, he can still express religious insights in class— presumably due to the school's homogeneity.)

Readers never immersed in BYU thinking may gawp at the attention to minutiae regulating dress and hygiene as well as behavior. A beard permit, a form to "rat out" fellow students, and ways of monitoring professors through spy rings and bishop interviews are all here Jots and tittles reign in BYU's fervent policy debates.

Yetsomething more instinctive seems afoot—a sense alerting the herd to any maverick expression that might endanger consensus. Perhaps passions garbed in reason impel a veteran professor to baptize or excommunicate works of fiction and poetry, author by author Or to ignore curricula changes at peril of "killing off" an entire class of English majors. Or to force out colleagues, citing the very perspective or expertise that recommended their hiring.

Similarly, the institutional suppression of women in hiring, promotion, and all types of expression is as Victorian as the era when BYU began, except for changes made to avoid lawsuits and for long-debated subtleties in official statements The authors draw no modern parallels to this vigorous enforcement of "role" (during the rise of the Third Reich, for instance, or within Amish, Islamic, or Hasidic cultures), but they describe how the organization of a women's resource center and protests of rape or incest draw institutional fire.

The authors, in short, plot a direct and meticulous course through time and event, even as they provoke deeper thought about humans' primal drives and devotions.

LINDA SILLITOE Mesa, Arizona

By LYMAN D PLATT and L KAREN PLATT (St George, UT: Tonaquint Press, 1998. 201 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

Grafton the ghost town: that's what we called it when I first visited there more than thirty years ago on a summer evening. When I worked with other college students at a lodge in Zion National Park, Grafton was a place we would go when we got an attack of "canyon fever"—when canyon walls closed in on us too much Grafton is one of Utah's best-known and bestpreserved ghost towns. But the buildings in the old town are best viewed from a distance, at evening twilight, or in the entertaining 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Up close, the crumbling buildings convey the sad truth that nothing lasts forever.

Grafton was settled in 1859 by Mormon families who were called to the Cotton Mission in Utah's Dixie Living in dugouts, wagon boxes, and tents in the Upper Virgin River Valley, they were flooded out by a forty-day rain in 1862 and forced to relocate the town a couple of miles east. Visiting the newly located settlement in the fall, Brigham Young viewed the picturesque setting and described it as "romantic." Orson Pratt lived there in a tent from 1863-64 Grafton was the county seat of Kane County from 1864-66. Its population never rose above 170 people nor to more than about twenty families during its years of habitation The last permanent residents moved away in the 1940s.

The authors of Grafton: Ghost Town on the Rio Virgin are genealogists. The names of the people who lived in Grafton at every twist and turn of its history are documented When did each family arrive? What year did each family leave? Thirty pages of lists in the appendix document every birth, marriage, death, and cemetery burial from a myriad of genealogical sources. Vital statistics are the forte of the authors, and they do not seem to have left a genealogical stone unturned Anyone who had an ancestor who lived in Grafton for even a brief time is going to find that ancestor's name in this book.

Therein lies the rub for the general readers. Those who may have visited or glimpsed Grafton from the highway and are curious about its past but who do not have an ancestral link to the town are not going to be interested in the residential tenure of every family who ever lived there The name of every family at every census-taking is of little interest to the casual reader. For the sake of keeping the text flowing and interesting, such information should have been placed in an appendix The background information detailing early pioneer explorations and the settlement of other towns drags on too long. The text could have been greatly improved with more chapter divisions to delineate the chronological periods discussed A reader should also be advised that the frequent references in the text to information "as noted below" does not refer to a footnote or to information in the text on that page. Instead, it refers to information in the various appendices lists I did not figure this out until after I had read more than seventy pages.

This book and the town of Grafton are both best viewed from a distance. Up close, you can see things that could have improved this book. Nevertheless, it does uncover the stories of Grafton's people and its past; you just have to wade through an abundance of names and dates to get to the nuggets But for those who have an ancestral connection to Grafton the ghost town, this book is a gold mine.

MEL BASHORE Riverton, Utah

By DAVID L. BIGLER (Spokane: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1998. 411 pp. Cloth, $39.50. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1998. 411 pp. Paper, $21.95.)

Wallace Stegner has accurately described the primary challenge faced by readers and writers of Mormon history: "The literature on the Mormons is enormous, repetitious, contradictory, and embattled. The more one wades into this morass the deeper he is mired, and the farther from firm ground." What a pleasure it is, therefore, to read a book as well-researched, organized, and balanced as Forgotten Kingdom.

Bigler's thesis is that Utah's territorial history can be understood only within the context of Mormon millennial expectations The belief in the literal Second Coming of Christ during the lifetime of the faith's founders was central to early Mormon theology Preparatory to this event was the establishment by modern prophets of a world government that would supersede all earthly governments The building of the Kingdom of God, then, was the raison d'etre for the Mormon pioneers who arrived in Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Yet the theocratic state envisioned by the Mormons put them in direct conflict with the federal government As the author notes, "The confrontation between the Great Basin theocracy and the American republic would go on for a half century and made Utah, one of the first places settled west of the Missouri River, among the last admitted to the Union."

Utah's territorial history is incomplete without an examination of the bold millennial claims of the Mormons, how those claims translated into political, economic, and military actions, and the consequences of those actions. The Kingdom of God affected every facet of life in Utah Territory, including Mormon relations with Utah's Indians, overland emigrants, federal officials, and non-Mormon settlers Forgotten Kingdom is a tale of two cities, Salt Lake City and Washington. Sifting through a mountain of documentary material from these two locations, the author interprets Mormon source documents within the theology of the Kingdom of God He uses government documents to explain the federal response to the Mormon challenge to its authority. Seemingly disconnected subjects such as Utah's Indian wars, the Mormon Reformation, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the Utah War, the United Order, Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution, and the polygamy prosecutions are really chapters in this evolving story. Utah was admitted to the Union after the Mormon church abandoned the practice of polygamy, but the sensational aspects of polygamy have overshadowed the more important theological change that moved the building of the Kingdom of God to an indefinite future time Bigler's epilogue examines the many ironies of this theological change. Utah became a state, and the Mormon church survived and has flourished, but the building of the theocratic Kingdom of God failed.

Forgotten Kingdom is an impressive achievement The author has demonstrated an understanding of Mormon theology and a mastery of the source documents, and he makes a convincing argument for his historical frame of reference George Arbaugh wrote in his 1932 study Revelation in Mormonism: "To know Mormonism one must know the origin of its ideas and attitudes." The same can be said for knowing and understanding modern Utah The Kindgom of God left a positive legacy in Mormon society's sense of community and place, but it also left a legacy of unresolved issues related to polygamy. Bigler's historical perspective provides an understanding of the origin of the ideas and attitudes of this modern society. The only regret is that Forgotten Kingdom was not available during Utah's statehood centennial.

PETER H DELAFOSSE Salt Lake City, Utah

Edited by FREDERICK LUEBKE (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. x + 198 pp. Cloth, $45; Paper, $19.95.)

This book is an eclectic collection of essays by eleven authors concerning the experiences of immigrants from Spain, Sweden, England, and other European countries who settled in the American West It also includes tales that focus on religion (Jews, Mormons, and Mennonites) and gender The settlements studied are in the Dakotas, Utah, Montana, California, Nebraska, and Manitoba. There is also a chapter on the most native of Americans (the southwestern Indians) and the Spanish Missions.

All of the contributions in this collection are reprinted or adapted from prior publications Two of the authors (Emmons on the Butte Irish and Cinel on Italians in San Francisco) contributed chapters taken from books they had authored. In addition, two of the authors had previously contributed their chapters to another collection of essays edited by Frederick Luebke entitled Ethnicity on the Plains. In short, this is recycled history that, in most cases, is not as good as the original, since it has been truncated and taken out of context.

The reason the editor gives for republishing these articles is set forth in his introduction He observes that the narratives of European immigrants have been overlooked by frontier and western historians (vii) and that immigration historians "have also tended to overlook Europeans who settled in the West" (viii). To remedy this oversight, the editor "narrowed [his] selections to studies that explore ethnic history in particular communities" rather than "selecting essays that treat immigration history broadly." According to the editor, "such studies best illustrate recent scholarship in this field and demonstrate the kinds of sources historians used to develop or advance new concepts in pursuit of ethnic history" (xvi).

The problem with the editor's approach is that it does not remedy the problem that prompted the volume in the first place: the lack of attention given to the general experiences of European immigrants bywestern historians While all of the selections are admittedly worthy of republication, there are hundreds of others that could be included in avolume like this. This is true for all of the communities examined in the volume, and it is also true for the various nineteenth-century communities of Utah Territory In fact, there has been a particular failure of western historians to recognize the contributions of the European immigrants—both Mormon and nonMormon—to communities in Utah settled in the nineteenth century.

Nevertheless, the editor chose well when he selected Dean L May's "Three Frontiers: Family, Land and Society in the American West, 1850-1900," which was taken from his book-length study of English immigration to Alpine, Utah. As a prominent historian of both Utah and Mormonism, May is recognized for his grasp of the general themes of immigration history. May studied the narratives of British converts to Mormonism who settled in Alpine during the second half of the nineteenth century These immigrants "settled throughout the territory, giving Utah a distinctively English cast" (34). In fact, by the 1860s there "were four times as many adults in the town [Alpine] of English birth or recent background than from any other country, or state in the United States—two English-born adults for every American-born" (35) May also describes the profiles of these immigrants, including their hometowns in England, their occupations and ages, and their contributions to rural Utah. He compares their experiences in Alpine with the experiences of other British immigrants in different communities At the same time, he recognizes the influence the LDS church had on these immigrants and the communities they settled Unlike many immigrants to the American West, they were not related by blood, but they were by religious belief. Their shared beliefs influenced their values, their lifestyles, and, perhaps most significantly, the size of their households. It also influenced the roles that men and women undertook in their communities.

While May's article is both admirable and appropriate, it is unfortunate that it is the only contribution relating to the experiences of European immigrants in Utah It is understandable that a book-length collection of essays relating to the American Westwould only have limited pages devoted to the experiences of immigrants to Utah Nevertheless, there are many other immigrant experiences of the type the editor sought to embrace in this collection of essays. Mormon converts from Scandinavia were also important contributors to settlements in Utah territory Bill Mulder's memorable book, Homeward to Zion, contains important narratives of many Scandinavian immigrants Narratives of eighteenth-century Mormon converts from other parts of Europe (France, Germany, and Italy) are harder to locate than are the words of the British and Danish, but their stories have been told and are only rarely included in general histories of Utah.

While the experiences of Mormon immigrants in nineteenth-century Utah will always dominate the pages of Utah territorial history, non-Mormon immigrants also made very lasting and significant contributions Their narratives have been published in the pages of this Quarterly and in volumes published by the Society, most notably The Peoples of Utah, and to some extent in the new county histories. The exclusion of these narratives from works such as Luebke's volume and the failure of many historians to recognize this part of Utah's past help perpetuate a common misunderstanding that only Mormon converts built the communities of Utah. If Utah's image is to be elevated beyond the stereotype—that only Mormons live in Utah and they are responsible for all of its successes and all of its failures—its history must take into account the varied contributions of Mormon/non-Mormon immigrants and their descendants' continuing involvement in the community If the stereotype still predominates today in many parts of the world—and it does—it is in part because of a failure to explain to a wide audience the multi-faceted immigration patterns that helped contribute to the growth of Utah Territory. Thus, the type of stereotype that has caused many in the world to assume that the Olympic scandal was a "Mormon scandal" is a reflection of a continuing image that Utah continues to be first and foremost a Mormon settlement.

Ironically, non-Mormon immigrants may have been most accurately observed and described by travelers from Europe who were prepared to believe the stereotypes but who often left with a much different understanding Perhaps outsiders are better prepared to understand the role of diversity in a community than are those with more insular experiences The same travelers who left Utah with a much more positive view of Mormon settlers—many of whom were European immigrants—than when they arrived were also more cognizant of the existence of a sizable nonMormon community Thus, the French traveler Biancour recognized the contributions of Italian and French engineers to a factory built in West Jordan for processing low-grade silver ores. Other French, Italian, and German travelers—who sought out ethnic immigrants among the many Mormon settlers—made similar observations While there is an absence of ethnic neighborhoods in Utah, there should not continue to be an absence of ethnic history. Although Luebke's failure to explore the contributions of nonEnglish-speaking immigrants to Utah's heritage is understandable, the continued failure of Utah historians to do so will not be.

MICHAEL HOMER Salt Lake City