Books Reviewed:

1. Will Bagley. Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows.

2. DeEtta Demaratus. The Force of a Feather: The Search for a Lost Story of Slavery and Freedom.

3. Roger Robin Ekins. Defending Zion: George Q Cannon and the California Mormon Newspaper Wars of 1856-1857.

4. Richard Neitzel Holzapfel. Brigham Young: Images of a Mormon Prophet.

5. Jeffrey Nichols. Prostitution, Polygamy, and Power. Salt Lake City, 1847-1918.

6. David Persuitte. Joseph Smith and the Origins of The Book of Mormon.

7. Richard E. Turley Jr., editor/producer. Selected Collections from the Archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

8. Glen M. Leonard. Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, A People of Promise.

9. Robert V. Remini. Joseph Smith.

10. Dean C. Jessee, comp and ed. Personal Writings of Joseph Smith. Rev. ed.

11. Armand L. Mauss. All Abraham's Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage.

12. Donna Toland Smart, ed. Exemplary Elder. The Life and Missionary Diaries of Perrigrine Sessions, 1814-1893.

13. Jeffrey S. O'Driscoll. Hyrum Smith: A Life of Integrity.

14. Don S. Colvin. Nauvoo Temple: A Story of Faith.

15. James B. Allen, Ronald W. Walker, and David J. Whittaker. Studies in Mormon History, 1830-1997: An Indexed Bibliography; with a Topical Guide to Published Social Science Literature on the Mormons.

16. Leland Homer Gentry. A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri from 1836 to 1839.

17. Dan Vogel and Brent Lee Metcalfe, eds. American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon.

18. LaMar C. Berrett, general editor. Sacred Places: Ohio and Illinois, A Comprehensive Guide to Early LDS Historical Sites.

20. Craig L. Foster. Penny Tracts and Polemics: A Critical Analysis of Anti-Mormon Pamphleteering in Great Britain, 1837-1860.

21. Robert D. Anderson. Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith: Psychobiography and the Book of Mormon.

22. William D. Morain. The Sword of Laban: Joseph Smith, Jr. and the Dissociated Mind.

24. Edward Leo Lyman and Larry Lee Reese. The Arduous Road: Salt Lake to Los Angeles, the Most Difficult Wagon Road in American History.

25. Reid L. Neilson, ed. The Japanese Missionary Journal of Elder Alma O. Taylor 1901-10.

Will Bagley. Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. xxiv + 493 pp. 5 maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography. Cloth: $39.95; ISBN 0-8061-3426-7 Buy it now!

Reviewed by Todd Compton
I am not an authority on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and I have not read all the primary documents on this tragedy. I am working on a biography of Jacob Hamblin, so I have been researching southern Utah history, but as Hamblin was not present at the massacre, it is not a primary focus in my research.

Nevertheless, the Mountain Meadows Massacre is one of the most significant events in southern Utah and in Mormon history; it was an authentically tragic event, bringing out the worst in good people. It is fascinating and horrifying. I read through some of the Lee trial testimony at the Huntington Library while preparing to write this review; and even though I'd read Juanita Brooks and Will Bagley and had lived with my knowledge of the massacre since I was a teenager, my reaction was still one of shock. It is hard to believe that Mormons could have done this. Following orders from their military/ecclesiastical superiors, they lied to, then slaughtered, unarmed, defenseless men, women, teens, and older children.

Bagley's book is the first major scholarly treatment of the massacre since Juanita Brooks published her classic The Mountain Meadows Massacre a half century ago, in 1950 (Palo Alto, Calif: Stanford University Press), a book which some regard as the beginning of the genre of revisionist New Mormon History. Nevertheless, a half century of more primary documents, secondary publications, and increasingly sophisticated archives makes new publication on the massacre desirable. For the historian, the Mountain Meadows Massacre presents an enormous challenge; and as Brooks wrote, probably no treatment of the subject will ever be definitive. In history, evidence is always contradictory and haphazard; we would like many full diaries and contemporary records recording any major event. If an event is politically or religiously controversial, the tendency is for both sides to bend the evidence, so we would like an equal number of sources from each side, and a wealth of entirely unbiased eyewitness observers. In Mormon history, this kind of conflict in biased evidence is commonplace, with lurid anti-Mormon sources contradicting idealized pro-Mormon sources. The responsible historian must be skeptical of both extremes, and try to support the truth from (usually limited) non-biased evidence, and sources that seem less emotional, pro and con.

Serious wrongdoing adds another layer of difficulty, for the wrongdoer may "bend" the truth (or lie outright) to exculpate him/herself and cast the "real" blame on others. Rob Briggs is preparing a study of the Mountain Meadows Massacre in which he analyzes the affidavits and court testimony from this point of view.

The truth is: we have no first-hand, reasonably contemporary account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre–no known diaries, no contemporary newspaper accounts. (The Deseret News did not send a reporter to the massacre site.) All the eyewitness evidence is retrospective. In addition, all of the adults at the massacre who later left affidavits or court testimony concerning the massacre were participants, and therefore their testimonies are strikingly exculpatory; the witnesses generally portray themselves as opposed to the massacre, and engaging in it reluctantly. In other affidavits they are not portrayed as reluctant or opposed to the massacre at all.

So the evidence for the Mountain Meadows Massacre is a hall of mirrors. The problem is, when everybody is lying, who do you believe? How can you reach any certainty on what actually happened? The best you can do is analyze the evidence and strive for probability. Overarching this whole problem is the fact that this is part of Mormon history–partisan religious history. We have to sort our way through extreme anti-Mormon views of the massacre and Mormon views (many years of denials, distortions, and stonewalling). In addition, the LDS Archives has a tradition of keeping sensitive documents restricted; the institutional church denied Juanita Brooks key Mountain Meadows documents, and apparently has done the same with Bagley.

Bagley, one of the premier historians, specializing in Mormons in Western history and currently researching the overland trail, has waded into this morass. He takes a negative view of Mormon involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre (not surprising, considering what Mormons did), especially focusing on their leaders and on the Mormon ideology of blood vengeance. The result is a great book: colorfully written, grimly factual, passionately partisan. Yet the price of taking one side of the argument is that this is not the final statement on the massacre; it is more like an closing argument–superbly done, well-documented, skillfully argued. And because of this book, there will be an ongoing, healthy scholarly dialogue about the massacre; Bagley deserves great credit for restoring that dialogue, some fifty years after Juanita Brooks wrote her book.

One thing I like about Blood of the Prophets is that it is the victims' book. Bagley sympathizes intensely with those who were murdered at the meadows and with the children survivors. One of the outstanding revisionist contributions of this book is that he uses evidence from those children survivors. (This evidence is imperfect; it is retrospective, and derives from the memories of very young children; nevertheless, all evidence is imperfect, and this data should be taken seriously, as Bagley does.) As a historian of the overland trail, he gives a brilliant portrayal of the Fancher party as a typical group of overland travelers moving west; far from the paragons of evil as they are portrayed in some defensive Mormon sources (poisoning wells, ravishing Mormon women, bragging about killing Joseph Smith), Bagley offers the more reasonable story that they were decent, normal Americans trying to make the difficult journey to the West and, in general, trying to avoid trouble with the Mormons and Native Americans.

Nevertheless, as is typical of all history, many pieces of evidence that Bagley adduces can be interpreted in various ways. For instance, one of the child survivors, five-year-old Rebecca Dunlap, identified Jacob Hamblin as a participant in the massacre (148). However, it is well established that Hamblin was not there, so she clearly made a mistake. When Dunlap identified Albert, Jacob's adopted Native American boy, as the killer of her two sisters, could she have made a similar mistake? Keep in mind that Dunlap did not know any Mormons or local Native Americans when the massacre took place. Then she and her two younger sisters stayed at the Hamblin home before they were taken back to Arkansas, so she would have known the Hamblin family, including Albert, best of anyone. Did she accuse those whom she knew? The identi-fication of Jacob Hamblin makes that a possibility, and also makes it possible that she incorrectly linked Albert to the killings. On the other hand, one could argue, as Bagley does, that Dunlap mistook one of Jacob Hamblin's brothers for Hamblin and that she was right about Albert.

Sometimes Bagley takes one interpretation vigorously, rather than allowing other interpretations made possible by the complexity of the evidence. A good historian often does take one interpretation strong-mindedly; nevertheless, given the evidential problems in the Mountain Meadows Massacre story, giving those other possibilities their full due would be valuable.

Often scholarly judgments are a matter of degree. For instance, Bagley rightly rejects the melodramatic Mormon portrayal of the Fancher party as absolute villains. Nevertheless, there were tensions between the Fancher party and the Mormons as the group traveled through Utah that have been documented and which Bagley notes. The group was varied; there were undoubtedly effective older leaders, and men with less judgment. A Missourian joined the group in Beaver (111). A number of disaffected Mormons trying to get out of Utah joined the party (104). A "Dutchman" in the group had been verbally abusive with Mormon leaders in Provo and Nephi (111). This vocal minority, mixed with the homespun family men who made up most of the party, might have spoken too freely; given the post-Reformation, Utah war climate, this minority might have had an impact. But to what extent? Not enough to merit a massacre, certainly, but it is possible that they might have contributed to the problem (Brooks, Mountain Meadows, 40-50).

Bagley's intense sympathy with the victims causes him to have a complete lack of sympathy for the Mormons present at the massacre–an understandable reaction. Yet one thing I missed in this book is a humanization and individualization of the Mormons who carried out the massacre, who felt they were following orders. (And in Bagley's view, Brigham Young ordered the massacre, so in a way, those who carried out the massacre in southern Utah would have been victims of Young.) Before reading this book, I'd read Juanita Brooks' biography of her grandfather, On the Ragged Edge: The Life and Times of Dudley Leavitt (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1958) and came away from it admiring Leavitt enormously. Yet he was there at the massacre. How could a decent, authentically good person be involved? Bagley's book turns its emphasis elsewhere. I would like such characters as Dudley Leavitt, Nephi Johnson, Ira Hatch, Sam Knight, Ira Allen, John Higbee, to have been looked at a little more deeply, more empathically. Bagley has an appendix listing the victims of the massacre; an appendix of all known Mormons and Native Americans involved in the massacre would have been equally valuable.

Bagley tends to view the massacre as a result of Mormon ideology and vengeance. Yet while this component was certainly present in the massacre, many other elements were factors also. The massacre occurred during the Utah War; how does it compare to other war massacres in the American West and elsewhere? Bagley, whose interests in the western history extend far beyond Utah, oddly does not look at analyses of comparable violence in western history. Yet this massacre occurred in the West, and it is difficult to see it happening anywhere but in a frontier setting. I also wonder how this massacre compares to more standard massacres in the American West, massacres of Native Americans. Because of Bagley's "Mormon ideology" focus, he does not explore these questions. Yet, as Juanita Brooks observed in her Mountain Meadows Massacre, this massacre "grew out of a complex chain of circumstances" (223). She concludes that the massacre may finally be regarded as "a classic study in mob psychology or the effects of war hysteria" (218). The very placing of the massacre – so far away from cities on a popular emigrant trail – would lead one to interpret it (partially at least) as a frontier event, not just an idiosyncratic Mormon event.

The central thesis of Bagley's book, that Brigham Young ordered the Mountain Meadows Massacre, is, Bagley admits, based on circumstantial evidence. Nevertheless, partially because of new evidence from the Dimick Huntington journal that reports Brigham Young "giving" the stock of non-Mormon emigrant companies to a council of Native Americans, Bagley argues his point strongly. The book on the massacre presently being written by three historians employed by the LDS Church–Richard E. Turley Jr., Glen M. Leonard, and Ronald G. Walker–will strongly dispute this. An advance report on their arguments appears in Will Bagley and Ron Walker, "Did Brigham Young Order a Massacre?" True West 50 (April 2003): 31-34. According to Walker's statements, they will apparently portray Young as entirely divorced from responsibility for the massacre.

Not having read the totality of documents that Bagley and Walker et al. have, I nevertheless find myself leaning toward a middle ground on this issue. In an unwise decision, Young apparently encouraged Native Americans to attack wagon trains (as the Dimick Huntington journal and other evidence shows). While he might not have personally ordered Mormons to murder everyone in the Fancher party old enough to be a solid witness (as Dame and Haight apparently did), he and Apostle George A. Smith encouraged Native American violence directed toward emigrants at this point in the Utah War. Then Young acted as accessory after the fact in the case of the Mountain Meadows Massacre since he learned the full details soon after it occurred (Brooks, Mountain Meadows Massacre, 219). Arguments that Young did not act to bring those responsible for the massacre to justice because the responsibility for trying the case was in the hands of the new governor and judges are ludicrous; if I find out that a murder has taken place, it is my duty as a citizen to make the details known and hasten the course of justice in every possible way. In his ecclesiastical role, Young presumably should also have quickly investigated and excommunicated those involved, Dame and Haight at the very least.
Of the 382 pages in Bagley's text, about 220 take place after the massacre. These pages describe the events after the event, many Mormons' efforts to censor the fact that Mormon leaders ordered and carried out the event, and the story of how the truth of the Mormon involvement gradually emerged. This account is as riveting, moving, partisan, infuriating, and tragic as the story of the massacre itself. Here again, Bagley's heroes are not the institutional Mormons censoring the story; they are journalists, judges, government officials, and historians who courageously brought the truth to light, including Juanita Brooks, a committed and practicing Mormon.

What are the lessons of the Mountain Meadows Massacre? To me, however you interpret the event, the most important moral is the danger of complete, unquestioning obedience. In war, in politics, in religion, in business, or elsewhere, completely submitting moral discernment to superiors–which many institutions will tend to encourage–can make subordinates complicit in crimes or injustices or coverups. As employees at Enron, we may follow orders and destroy evidence. As soldiers, we may take part in a My Lai massacre. As politicians or scholars, we might become "men for all seasons" to further our careers. But at times, civil disobedience (or, perhaps, Christian disobedience) is the right ethical choice.

DeEtta Demaratus. The Force of a Feather: The Search for a Lost Story of Slavery and Freedom. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, ca. 2002. xiv, 235 pp. Photographs, appendix, notes, bibliography. Cloth: $27.95, ISBN 0-87480714-X
Buy it now!

Reviewed by Sherilyn Cox Bennion
This work tells the lively story of George Q. Cannon's two years as editor of the Western Standard in San Francisco. Roger Robin Ekins, chair of the Honors Program and teacher of literature, writing, and the history of ideas at Butte College in Oroville, California, uses editorials and articles from the Standard and its adversary publications in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles to chronicle the "newspaper wars" of his title.

Ekins also includes correspondence between Cannon and various Church authorities, particularly Brigham Young, whose chatty letters provide a nice bonus to the heart of the book–excerpts from the newspapers. These excerpts graphically demonstrate the attitudes that the Church and Cannon, as its apologist, had to confront and the arguments that they presented in defense of Mormonism. The newspaper exchanges are introduced, connected, and illuminated by Ekins's commentary, based on extensive research, which clarifies the issues involved.

Fresh from a highly successful mission to Hawaii, the twenty-eight-year-old Cannon went to California with a two-fold assignment from Brigham Young: to publish the Book of Mormon in Hawaiian and to start a newspaper, one of four that the Church established outside Utah between 1853 and 1857. Earlier he had obtained some journalistic experience while assisting his uncle, John Taylor, with publication of newspapers in Nauvoo, but his San Francisco duties went far beyond the largely typographical training he had received there. In his journal he recorded a word play on his name that both friends and foes adapted to their various purposes: "Bro. Brigham told me to practice writing as much as I possibly could. Bro. Jedediah [M. Grant] told me to let them know I was a Cannon; to roar" (35).

Cannon's roaring through the weekly Western Standard began with publication of its prospectus in January 1856, after the initial 2,000-copy press run of the Book of Mormon in Hawaiian had been completed. The Western Standard he said, would be devoted "to the interests of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints–to be an exponent of its doctrines, and a medium through which the public can derive correct information in relation to its objects and progress." It also would "contain items of general intelligence and the current news of the day, both foreign and domestic" (37). This secondary purpose lies outside the scope of Ekins' book.

Eleven chapters treat themes that preoccupied Cannon and his opponents between February 1856, when the first issue appeared, and November 1857, month of the paper's demise. Other chapters introduce the editor and the paper, feature his parting editorials and follow his later career. An appendix provides information about the ten newspapers Cannon quoted most frequently.

The thematic chapters examine Sam Brannan and the San Francisco vigilantes, general criticisms of the "Mormons" (Cannon always used the quotation marks), the case of apostate John Hyde, Lamanites and Danites, polygamy, the Mormon Reformation, theocracy in Deseret, Judge W. W. Drummond and other federal officials in Deseret, the assassination of Parley P. Pratt, the approach of the Utah War, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

While students of Mormon history will find most of these topics familiar, those who have not had the pleasure of dipping into the pages of the nineteenth-century press may be surprised at the level of vituperation directed at the Church and its members. This was an era when editors attracted readers with flowery phrases and fiery invective. Ideals of objective journalism lay far in the future, and editors attacked religious groups, politicians, suffragists and other individuals and movements with equal abandon. While Cannon mostly used more moderate language than the Church's detractors, he lived up to the paper's motto, "To Correct Mis-Representation We Adopt Self-Representation," and he sometimes overlooked or denied kernels of truth in their charges. Six weeks after the massacre at Mountain Meadows, for example, he maintained the innocence of the Mormons and two weeks after that called to task those who would "heap upon them the odium of every such deed" even though "they may be as innocent as angels" (381).
Injudicious statements by Church leaders, particularly during the Reformation of 1856-57, caused problems for Cannon when adversaries used them as evidence of Mormon extremism. Cannon ignored such speeches, instead printing letters that referred to the movement and its results in glowing terms, like one from Apostle Wilford Woodruff expressing his belief that "the fire of a universal reformation in this Territory has been lit and will continue to burn, until a permanent foundation for good works has been laid in our midst" and praising the "pointed, Godlike sermons" flowing from Brigham Young and his counselors (220).

On another topic of concern, the Western Standard published a letter from Young that urged people "to treat Indians as they themselves would like to be treated. . . . to make allowances for their ignorance, habits of life, traditions, and instead of treating them like dogs and wolves, learn to treat them kindly, and like human beings" (144). This position echoed Cannon's sentiments; his editorials urged understanding and compassion for the Indians.

Ekins's chapter "`The Kingdom that Daniel Saw': Autocracy, Theocracy, and Theo-Democracy in Deseret" serves a particularly useful purpose by demonstrating that, while perceived violence and intolerance and, especially, polygamy occupied the forefront of public paranoia, the perception of the Mormons' theocratic political order as a threat to American democratic ideals lay at the root of the continuing conflict. In March 1857 the San Francisco Weekly Chronicle found reason to refuse "such a blot as a Mormon State upon our flag. . .in the fact that to admit Utah with its system of priesthood, which virtually abolishes all civil power, and constitutes the whole government an all-ruling hierarchy" would establish a religion and thus violate the federal Constitution (259). Cannon answered that Utah's system, far from abolishing civil power, enhanced its efficiency and that in admitting Utah Congress would not be recognizing its system of belief and thus establishing religion but rather would be enforcing the Constitutional guarantee of the free exercise of religion (261).

As 1857 progressed, it became increasingly clear that federal action threatened; and in response to the mobilizing of the Utah Expedition, Brigham Young called California Saints, including Cannon, back to Utah. He published the final issue of the Western Standard on 6 November. The Western Standard had always attracted more subscribers in Utah than in California; but if it had changed few minds, it had successfully articulated Church positions and perhaps bolstered the faith of Mormon readers. More importantly, as Ekins points out, it had honed the skills and convictions of George Q. Cannon, who became a most influential spokesman for the Church.

Ekins summarizes:

The pages of the Western Standard reveal that George Q. Cannon was a strong-willed, sometimes acerbic, even occasionally petulant man who showed no mercy to his many journalistic opponents. . . . That Cannon's most effective weapons in the California Mormon newspaper wars of 1856 and 1857 were his words no one can doubt. While he occasionally stooped to argument ad hominem himself, for the most part he appealed to reason, demanding that his opponents produce facts rather than mere accusation, evidence as opposed to convenient rhetoric. As he proved in California, this fearless young journalist was the best and most effective weapon the Mormons had to defend their controversial American religion. (404-5)

Cannon is justly recognized today as an important figure in the Church, in politics and in business. This work not only offers ample evidence of his less well documented talent as an editor–"one of the most humorous, irascible, and brilliant. . .of his day" (424)–but also illuminates the issues he confronted and the social climate during a pivotal period in Church history.

SHERILYN COX BENNION {lcbscb@mstar2.net} is a professor emeritus of journalism, now retired from Humboldt State University, Arcata, California.

Richard Neitzel Holzapfel. Brigham Young: Images of a Mormon Prophet. Salt Lake City: Eagle Gate, 2000. xv, 320 pp. 141 illustrations (of Young) plus 67 others; chapter notes, index, list of illustrations, list of repositories; image credits. Cloth: $39.95, ISBN: 1-57008-625-7 Buy it now!

Reviewed by Maxine Hanks
This beautiful photo-biography is an intimate look at Mormonism's most recognized leader. Richard Neizel Holzapfel's collection of uncommon and classic photographs, immaculately reproduced, manages to humanize Brigham Young's stern visage, which is no small feat. The main virtue of the book is its thoroughness, although its beauty and its organization are equally impressive. Holzapfel's goal was "to bring together all the known paintings and photographic images” resulting in “the most complete visual record of Brigham Young to date” (1,5).

More than a collection of photos, this book is a thorough discussion about the images of Brigham Young. The introduction discusses the book's approach and scope, the challenges of collecting and identifying historic photos, the search for missing images, research questions and answers, and details about format and contents.

The contents are smartly organized into ten chapters with an attractive layout and design. The chapters include a brief biography of "Brigham Young's life from 1801 to 1848" for those who need an orientation. Additionally interesting is a fifty-two-page chapter, "Now We See But a Poor Reflection," made up of "word images" or descriptions of Young gleaned from fellow Mormons, publications, and visitors to Utah including Howard Stansbury and Ulysses S. Grant. The images themselves, ranging from 1840 to 1877, are grouped into five chronological chapters entitled "1840s," "1850s," "1860s," "1870s," and "Death and Beyond." The conclusion ends with, "A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words."
The bulk of the book, about 230 pages, is devoted to the visual images of Brigham, including 141 black and whites and a special sixteen-page section of twenty-eight color prints. Media include photographs, portraits, sketches, and graphic depictions including cartoons.

What immediately struck me about the first four images of Young (1841-50) was their resemblance to the Prophet Joseph Smith. Young's first two portraits, painted in 1841 and 1845 seem to imitate the Prophet Joseph's pose, style, manner and clothing. This is even more noticeable in the first daguerreotype of Young (1846) which almost impersonates Joseph's classic pose in profile with cane and waistcoat depicted in Sutcliffe Maudsley's paintings. Holzapfel notes that some historians question whether this is an image of Young because "it does not look like him" (91). (To me, it looks like Young, trying to look like Smith.) Brigham's next image (1850) purposely imitates General Joseph Smith of the Nauvoo Legion, with Young wearing a borrowed legion uniform complete with a sword and posing in a manner similar to Joseph's well-known military portrait. Although the similarities between Brigham's first four portraits and those of Joseph Smith may be partly due to a coincidence of style, it seems possible that Young was making an effort to stress a resemblance to Joseph Smith. However, after 1850, when the transition to Utah was complete, all subsequent images of Brigham Young are full face-showing him as wide-faced and square-jawed with a characteristic tight-lipped look.

My favorite photo was taken in 1851-52. In it Brigham Young is seated, leaning on his right elbow, wearing a dark jacket, white shirt, and flowered scarf tied under his collar. It is a very appealing Brigham, and the author also features it on the book's cover. He radiates a lean, youthful energy, in contrast to later, more passive, even weary images after he has gained more girth. In this portrait, Brigham has long, almost shoulder-length, hair, in contrast to the earlobe-length style typical of later, sterner portraits.

From the cowlick on the back of Brigham's head to the shrewd side glance of his standard gaze, to the peaceful demeanor of his death mask, these images capture many sides of the iron-fisted western colonizer. This collection of views greatly personalizes the man, lessening his intimidation factor; one comes away realizing that Brigham was only human after all. The wealth of images is accompanied and enhanced by detailed explanations, historic quotations, and excerpts from newspapers, magazines, diaries and letters. Holzapfel even included details on Brigham's weight and health.

Holzapfel sums up, "Although it is true that no photograph can truly capture someone's likeness, photography does allow us to see a moment in time. It was the most realistic medium of the period. In fact, the camera was not always kind to early sitters and they were sometimes shocked by the honesty of their `likeness' preserved on a polished metal plate. Scars, wrinkles, and other imperfections could not simply be brushed away as in an oil painting. . . . The camera brought a new way of seeing the past. . .because it revealed human imperfections. . . . When comparing the photographs of Brigham over several decades, we can see the changes brought about by life’s experience. . . . All in all, this visual record does much to help us see Brigham Young more clearly than before" (71-73).

This book delivers all it promises within a stunning presentation of gorgeous reproductions on high-quality paper with a superb design. The book is a bargain and a "must have" for any Mormon library.

MAXINE HANKS {maxinehanks@juno.com} is a writer in Salt Lake City who has published four books and many articles.

Reviewed by Kathryn M. Daynes
Sex and power are always a heady combination. In this well-researched book, Jeffrey Nichols skillfully interweaves these themes as he explores how the Mormon-Gentile conflict over polygamy shaped Salt Lake City's policy toward prostitution and how the end of that strife resulted in a combined Mormon/Gentile reforming effort to abate prostitution in the 1910s. While the city's policy toward prostitution "mirrored" (178) that of other American cities, the conflict over plural marriage made the political battles over prostitution in Salt Lake unique.

Although the subtitle gives 1847 as the starting date, the narrative really begins in the 1870s with the large influx of non-Mormons into Utah and concentrates on the late 1880s to 1918. Nichols asserts, "The regulation of prostitution in Salt Lake City began under all-Mormon rule" in the 1870s (6). This is a surprising statement until one realizes that Nichols uses the term "regulation" to mean periodic or regular fines of prostitutes for a criminal activity and not, as in general usage, to mean state licensing of prostitutes, as was the case in Europe at the time.

The story Nichols tells is intriguing. Salt Lake City had few prostitutes before the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, but by 1872 Kate Flint and Cora Conway had established brothels on Commercial Street, just two blocks from Temple Square. When the all-Mormon police arrested the women and demolished their furnishings, the two madams sued in the Third District court before Judge James B. McKean, a federally appointed magistrate, who awarded the women several thousand dollars in damages. (Although jurisdictional disputes were central to the Mormon Gentile conflict, Nichols recounts but does not emphasize them.) With prostitutes successfully exploiting the Mormon-Gentile conflict to stay in business, city authorities simply arrested them periodically, fined them, and let them continue to ply their trade–"regulation" in Nichols' parlance.

As Nichols's narrative continues, the Liberal (anti-Mormon) Party victory in the 1890 municipal elections "strengthened regulation" (98); but Gentile reformers, fresh from their victory over plural marriage with the Woodruff Manifesto that year, demanded stricter enforcement of laws against prostitution. Erstwhile enemies–anti-polygamists and Mormons–soon joined to support a rescue home for prostitutes, although renewed conflict over plural marriage with the controversies surrounding B. H. Roberts and then Reed Smoot disrupted the rapprochement. In the shadow of the Smoot hearings, the American Party, a local anti-Mormon party promising to free people from apostolic rule, won control of Salt Lake City. Under Mayor John Bransford, in 1908 the city arranged with Dora Topham to build the Stockade on the west side to house all prostitutes. Prostitution was not legalized, but city police virtually ceased arresting prostitutes in the Stockade until 1911. The county sheriff did arrest forty of the women, but few were brought to trial.
Municipal sponsorship, albeit unofficial, of the Stockade outraged Mormons and Gentile reformers, who joined together to oust the American Party and to pass stronger state legislation, Nichols writes as he concludes the story. When Topham was convicted of pandering in 1911, the Stockade closed permanently. The incoming new mayor, Samuel R. Park, and his chief of police, Brigham F. Grant (half-brother of Heber J. Grant), suppressed all houses of prostitution, overturning the long-standing policy of "regulation." Not satisfied, reformers wanted suppression of all houses of resort, such as questionable rooming houses, cafes, and public dance halls–places frequented by the young and the working-class. "Morality did not cease to be contested in the early twentieth century," Nichols writes, "but divisions tended to be along generational and class rather than religious lines" as they had been earlier (3).

This is a well-told story of politicians, police, Mormons, Gentiles, reformers, and prostitutes. Especially of prostitutes. Using a wide variety of sources–including newspapers, fire insurance maps, and censuses, as well as police, court, and land records–Nichols brings to life notorious prostitutes and madams whose stories were heretofore little known. For example, the feisty and irrepressible Kate Flint, according to an unverified story, bought "Brigham Young's carriage and horses at auction after his death so that she could parade the streets and outrage the Saints" (30).

Despite the title, polygamy figures in the book mainly as a source of conflict between Mormons and Gentiles as each group struggled for power. Nichols's discussion of polygamy itself is cursory, simplistic, and negative. Nevertheless, in the context of this book his pairing of prostitution and polygamy is appropriate because many nineteenth-century middle-class Americans used prostitute for any woman who had a sexual relationship with a man not legally her husband. This definition potentially encompassed plural wives because most Victorians believed that it was lawful for men to have only one wife, any others being unlawful and thus prostitutes. In addition, "some Gentile women activists defined prostitution and polygamy as two aspects of the same phenomenon: the exploitation of women by a patriarchal gender system" (5).
Nichols probably agrees with the activists, although he avers that prostitutes "were not simply passive recipients or victims" (5). The leading reason women resorted to prostitution, he claims, was from financial necessity. Turn-of-the-century America had too few jobs for women that paid decent wages and provided steady work. Another reason comes from the Tribune, which "claimed that a Mormon upbringing, which exposed a girl to the immoralities of polygamy while offering her more opportunities to be in public, specially suited her to prostitution" (50). It is unclear whether Nichols gives credence to this claim or cites it as an example of anti-Mormon rhetoric.

Nevertheless, he discounts the theological underpinnings of polygamy. Mormon defenders, he states, "emphasized the religious nature of plural marriage at least partly to claim protection for the practice under the establishment of religion clause in the First Amendment" (13).

Nichols is more sympathetic to prostitutes than polygamists. Prostitutes, he argues, "contributed to the economic, political, and social life of the community and in a very real sense, the `Americanization' of Salt Lake City" (214). They also played a role in "closing the Mormon-gentile gap" during the early twentieth century (217). In telling the story of prostitutes' role in the political power struggles in Salt Lake, Nichols has made an important contribution to the political history of Salt Lake City and to studies of political reform during the Progressive Era. He has also rescued these prostitutes, although only from oblivion.

KATHRYN M. DAYNES is an associate professor of history at Brigham Young University and author of More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), which was given Best Book of the Year awards by both the Mormon History Association and the Utah State Historical Society.

David Persuitte. Joseph Smith and the Origins of The Book of Mormon. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2000. ix, 325 pp. Appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95. paper. ISBN 0-7864-0826-X Buy it now!

Reviewed by Lawrence Foster
Those interested in early Mormon history might easily conclude, with a slight variation on Ecclesiastes 12:12, "Of the making of books on the origin of the Book of Mormon there is no end." Why, one might well wonder, should anyone bother to write or read yet another such book? Weren't all the basic arguments put forward almost as soon as the Book of Mormon itself was first published? Believing Mormons, on the one hand, have been convinced that the book was based on Joseph Smith's discovery and translation, "by the gift and power of God," of ancient records telling the history and struggles of Hebrew-descended ancestors of the American Indians. Most non-Mormons, on the other hand, have insisted that the book must have been a hoax, fabricated by Joseph himself and passed off on his gullible followers as part of an effort to gain recognition and advance his own personal agenda. Has anyone over the years really gotten beyond these two basic approaches to the origin of the Book of Mormon?

Although this second enlarged edition of Joseph Smith and the Origins of The Book of Mormon does follow the basic outlines of the prevalent non-Mormon argument that the Book of Mormon was a self-conscious product of Joseph Smith's remarkable mind, David Persuitte's carefully researched and thoughtfully presented treatment of this much-debated topic does, I think, suggest new perspectives that deserve the attention of Mormons and non-Mormons alike.

Persuitte's goal is to present a comprehensive and plausible naturalistic argument about how Joseph could have derived and developed the ideas found in the Book of Mormon from his nineteenth-century American experiences. Unlike some writers, Persuitte is generally respectful of Joseph Smith's creative genius, even while attempting a step-by-step explanation of how the Mormon prophet might have created this book without supernatural intervention. He particularly stresses how Joseph may have drawn upon and substantially modified the ideas in Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews, two editions of which were published in 1823 and 1825 in Poultney, Vermont, the home town of Oliver Cowdery, to whom Joseph Smith dictated most of the Book of Mormon after 1827.
Part 1 contains eight chapters that seek to reconstruct and analyze the historical circum-stances associated with the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, including Joseph's personality and concerns, his early visionary experiences, his pre-Book of Mormon activities, his 1826 trial for alleged "money-digging" ("treasure hunting"), the discovery of the Book of Mormon plates, the loss of the first 116 manuscript pages, Joseph's more explicitly religious refocusing of the final text, and its 1830 publication as the Book of Mormon. In dealing with each topic, Persuitte judiciously assesses existing Mormon and non-Mormon arguments, in addition to developing his own analysis of how the Book of Mormon might actually have been produced.

These excerpts suggest the tone and character of Persuitte's analysis throughout:

Did Joseph Smith have the ability to author The Book of Mormon? Many writers, Mormon and non-Mormon alike, have maintained that he did not. These writers, however, have usually held these beliefs in order to advance their own beliefs or theories about the origin of Joseph Smith's latter-day "revelation." Because of that, their judgment about Joseph Smith's competence in this regard is open to question. In any case, it is presumptuous to denigrate the intellectual abilities of any individual. History is filled with those who, despite / 13/ inauspicious origins, made names for themselves in the field of literature. (11, 13)

In creating The Book of Mormon, Joseph used his fertile imagination to reshape, meld together, and project allegorically into ancient America an array of literary and social material that was part of his own early American environment. (84)

Part 2 of Persuitte's book, comprising chapters 9-11, argues from evidence of historical anachronisms that the Book of Mormon was clearly a nineteenth-century American production, most heavily influenced by Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews. Persuitte concludes: "Ethan Smith's theory of what happened to the ancestors of the Indians, with his religious ideas about the duty of the American people toward the Indians, not only provided Joseph with that frame-work, it also provided him with the ‘inspiration’ to produce The Book of Mormon" (134).

In Part 3, comprising chapters 12-19, Persuitte compares and contrasts the Book of Mormon with the View of the Hebrews. He compares often striking similarities in how both books handle topics such as claims about the Hebrew origin of the American Indians, prophecies about the religious future of the American Indians, the division of the early inhabitants into "good" and "bad" groups, their wars and backslidings, alleged pre-Columbian knowledge about Jesus, and the breakdown of the New World civilizations.
These chapters present numerous and striking quotation-by-quotation comparisons, many of them in parallel columns, suggesting how Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon may have repeatedly drawn upon, as well as deviated from, Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews. A brief review cannot effectively cover almost a hundred pages of closely argued analysis, but I have difficulty believing that anyone who approaches Persuitte's arguments with a willingness to consider them seriously can help being convinced that there are at least some striking relationships between the arguments and evidence advanced in the View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon.

In the two chapters comprising Part 4 and a brief epilogue, Persuitte discusses the Book of Mormon's possible influence on two controversial issues: Mormon policies toward the member-ship of blacks and Joseph Smith's introduction of polygamy. These chapters, regrettably, are not particularly detailed or original.

Four substantial appendices deal with the "Wood Scrape" affair, events occurring about 1800 that had possible parallels to later Mormon development; how the evidence of modern archaeology bears on the book's factually assessable assertions; the Spaulding theory, which Persuitte largely discounts; and the implications of the findings about the origin of the Book of Abraham and how it may be relevant for understanding the Book of Mormon.

Assessments of the quality of Persuitte's arguments will likely vary widely, depending on prior reader assumptions. Committed Latter-day Saints are likely to find the book's arguments disturbing, unconvincing, and offensive, chiefly because the book presents a carefully argued and relentlessly developed criticism of a fundamental article of Mormon faith–the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Thoughtful non-Mormons, ironically, may be challenged by this book to appreciate Joseph Smith–not as a person diminished in stature, but rather as a far more complex, conflicted, and believable human being than they could ever have imagined before. And Mormons who left the faith because they rejected the traditional all-or-nothing approach to Book of Mormon historicity may well find in Persuitte's analysis insights that could lead them toward a renewed, albeit still highly heterodox, appreciation of their earlier Mormon faith.

As a sympathetic non-Mormon scholar who has spent more than thirty years studying Joseph Smith and early Mormon history, my own reactions to Persuitte's book are complex and ambivalent. I cannot help being impressed by Persuitte's accomplishment and his achievement in moving beyond many monocausal treatments. Yet I also have both minor and major reservations about Persuitte's book.

Among my minor reservations is Persuitte's annoying stylistic propensity of placing in quotation marks terms that he does not personally take at face value. While he commendably avoids using loaded language, his repeated references to the Mormon "prophet's" "revelations" and "translations," and so on, are stylistically obtrusive and tedious.

Considerably more disturbing is Persuitte's too-limited acknowledgment of the pioneering analytical work of the great Mormon historian B. H. Roberts that resulted in Roberts's conclusion that the similarities between the Book of Mormon and the 1825 edition of View of the Hebrews were too substantial to have been coincidental. Although Persuitte has gone far beyond Roberts's path-breaking analysis, now published in Studies of the Book of Mormon, edited by Brigham D. Madsen, I believe that Roberts's work should have been acknowledged earlier than pages 104-5 and 108.

My most substantial reservation about Persuitte's study relates to his assumption that Joseph Smith was a self-conscious author, essentially using the normal processes of any historical novelist. Such rationalistic and literary approaches may well be an advance on the idea that Joseph Smith was a self-conscious fraud and con man. Ultimately, however, Persuitte's reduction of the Mormon prophet's motives to those of an aspiring author produces a curiously flat and ultimately unsatisfying analysis. I would have preferred a more psychologically complex approach to Joseph Smith's authorial motivation.

In the final analysis, Persuitte's study fails to truly comprehend the intense and conflicted prophetic drive and search for true religious authority that, I believe, lay at the heart of Joseph Smith's religious genius. Persuitte has gone a long way toward developing a naturalistic explanation of virtually all disputed points regarding the specific external sources upon which the Mormon prophet may have drawn for his understanding of pre-Columbian life in the New World. Such a relentlessly rationalistic analysis alone, however, cannot fully account for the development of Joseph Smith's extraordinary sense of religious mission, which was reflected so strongly in the Book of Mormon.

LAWRENCE FOSTER {larry.foster@hts.gatech.edu} is a professor of American history at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and author of Religion and Sexuality, which won the Mormon History Association's "best book" award.

Richard E. Turley Jr., editor/producer. Selected Collections from the Archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2002. 2 volumes; 74 DVDs. $1,299, ISBN: 0-8425-2530-0. System requirements: DVD drive, Web browser such as Microsoft Explorer or Netscape Navigator.

Reviewed by Gary James Bergera
Selected Collections is an achievement of such significance that no praise, no matter how effusive, seems sufficiently laudatory. Its contribution to the future of Mormon studies, Utah studies, and even U.S. studies more than compares to the writing in the nineteenth century of Joseph Smith's and Brigham Young's manuscript histories, to the compilation in the early twentieth century of the multi-volume Journal History of the Church, and to the callings in the early 1970s of Leonard J. Arrington as LDS Church Historian and of James B. Allen and Davis Bitton as Assistant Church Historians. The production and publication of Selected Collections is a watershed event whose impact will be felt for decades to come. Students and readers of Mormon history owe the leaders of the LDS Church and everyone associated with this monumental project our deepest thanks for making such indispensable material more readily available.

The scope of Selected Collections is truly staggering. The more than 400,000 manuscript pages, the majority of which have been scanned in full color, fill a total of seventy-four DVDs grouped into two volumes. They are:

VOLUME 1
DVDs 1-16 The History of the Church (commonly known as Joseph Smith's and later as Brigham Young's manuscript history).
DVD 17 The Church Historian's office journa1,1844-79.
DVD 18 General Church minutes, 1839-77.
Salt Lake Temple architectural drawings.
William Weeks's Nauvoo architectural drawings.
DVD 19 James G. Bleak, "Annals of the Southern Utah Mission."
Teachers Quorum minutes, 1834-45.
Kirtland High Council minutes, 1832-37.
Pottawattamie High Priests Quorum minutes, 1848-51.
Pottawattamie High Council conference minutes, 1848-51. (Note: These are conference minutes, not the deliberations of the high council, although such minutes do exist.)
Nauvoo Stake High Council court papers, 1839-44.
Winter Quarters Municipal High Council records, 1846-48.
Winter Quarters Municipal High Council correspondence, 1847-48.
Relief Society minutes, March 1842-March 1844.
Revelations collection, ca. 1831-76.
DVD 20 Joseph Smith collection, 1827-44 (including a supplement). (This collection does not include Joseph Smith's "Scriptory Book" or Joseph Smith's journal entries from the "Book of the Law of the Lord," both of which are available in volume 2 of Dean Jessee's The Papers of Joseph Smith.)
DVDs 21-25 Brigham Young's letterpress copybooks (and Edyth J. Romney's transcriptions), 1844-79.
DVD 26 Joseph F. Smith's journal, 1856-81, 1883, 1909, and 1912.
DVDs 27-28 Joseph F. Smith's incoming correspondence, 1853-1918.
DVDs 29-30 Joseph F. Smith's letterpress copybooks, 1875-1917.
DVD 31 Lorenzo Snow's journal and letterbook, 1836-45 and 1872.
Erastus Snow's journal, 1835-51 and 1856-57.
Willard Richards's papers, 1821-54 (diary, correspondence, etc.).
Orson Pratt's autobiography and journal, 1833-47.
DVDs 32-33 George A. Smith's papers, 1834-75.
DVDs 34-35 Franklin D. Richards's journal, 1844-54 and 1866-99.
DVD 36 Charles C. Rich collection, 1832-1908 (diary, correspondence, etc.).
DVD 37 Amasa Lyman collection, 1832-77 (diary, correspondence, , etc.).
DVD 38 J. Golden Kimball's journa1, 1883-87 and 1895-1908.

VOLUME 2
DVDs 1-36 The Journal History of the Church, through 31 December 1923.

Naturally, it would have been most interesting to know why these and not other collections were chosen for inclusion.

For anyone who has had to work with these materials on microfilm, having ready access to high-quality photographic images (which may surpass the originals in some instances) is nothing less than a godsend. A readable copy of the Journal History alone is worth the price of both volumes, although one wishes that the card-catalog index to the journal History had also been included. The only drawback–no doubt unavoidable, given the nature of the scanned images–is that none of these collections is word-searchable. As editor Richard E. Turley points out in the introduction: "Each user must read through the collections page by page, just as he or she would in going through the originals" (2).

Turley also addresses forthrightly the important issue of deletions. Such "sensitive" material falls into three broad categories: confidential (for example, the records of Church courts), private (for example, admissions, usually but not always, of a sexual nature), and sacred (for example, descriptions of temple rituals). The number of deletions, Turley reports, comprises less than 1 percent of the total amount of documentary materials in both volumes. Deletions appear on the scanned images as blacked-out words, paragraphs, or pages; the original documents have not been altered. Those collections published here in their entirety are: the "History of the Church"; the Salt Lake Temple drawings; the Nauvoo architectural drawings; the teachers quorum minutes; the Kirtland High Council minutes; the Pottawattamie High Priests quorum minutes; the Pottawattamie High Council conference minutes; the Winter Quarters Municipal High Council correspondence; the Relief Society minutes; the revelations collection; the Joseph Smith collection; Brigham Young's letterpress copybooks (originals and typescripts); Lorenzo Snow's journal and letterbook; Erastus Snow's journal; Willard Richards's papers; and Orson Pratt's autobiography and journal.

Those collections containing deleted material are: the Church Historian's office journal ("all or part of four brief entries. . .[out] of some eight thousand pages"); the general church minutes ("all or part of the minutes of twenty-eight meetings. . .[out] of more than four thousand pages"); James Bleak's "Annals of the Southern Utah Mission" ("eighteen paragraphs" out of "2,217 handwritten pages of text"); the Nauvoo Stake High Council court papers ("names of persons and other information that would identify the individuals associated with seventeen cases" out of "nearly sixty cases"); the Winter Quarters Municipal High Council records ("the documents associated with five [out] of the sixty-one cases");Joseph F. Smith's journal ("parts of forty-eight journal entries. . .[out] of five thousand pages"); Joseph F. Smith's incoming correspondence ("all or part of seventy-one letters. . .[out] of nineteen thousand pages");Joseph F. Smith's letterpress copybooks ("all or part of sixty-eight letters. . .[out] of seven thousand pages"); George A. Smith's papers ("all or part of fifteen letters received by Smith. . .[out] of more than thirteen thousand pages"); Franklin D. Richards's journal ("all or part of forty-five journal entries or supplementary documents. . .[out] of some ten thousand pages"); Charles C. Rich's collection ("all or part of nine journal entries or letters. . .[out] of three [thousand] pages"); Amasa Lyman's collection ("all or part of ten journal entries. . .[out] of more than six thousand pages"); J. Golden Kimball's journals ("parts of seven journal entries. . .[out] of nearly five thousand pages"); and the Journal History of the Church ("two entries and part of another. . .[out] of some 175,000 pages"). These quotations are from the introductions to each of these separate collections.

Not knowing what these relatively few deletions cover, or why they were made, makes it difficult to agree (or disagree) with the decision to withhold this material from public view. For example, the names of some of the individuals deleted from the Nauvoo Stake High Council court records were publicized by the LDS Church in the nineteenth century in the Nauvoo Neighbor and in the History of Joseph Smith serialized in the Deseret News and Millennial Star, and in at least one instance appear unaltered in the Journal History section published in volume 2 of Selected Collections. In addition, while some of the twenty-eight meetings in "General Church Minutes" containing deletions no doubt detail Church disciplinary courts, others do not. For example, the meeting of 30 April 1846, which is completely blacked out, reports the dedication proceedings of the Nauvoo Temple. The meetings of 16 November, 30 November, and 5 December 1847, also completely or partially blacked out, report the deliberations of the Council of the Twelve Apostles regarding the reorganization of the First Presidency. (Transcripts of these meetings may be found in Leonard Arrington's papers at Utah State University, in D. Michael Quinn's papers at Yale University, and in chapter 3 of my Conflict in the Quorum: Orson Pratt, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith). I do not doubt that the "committee of senior [LDS Church] archivists" acted judiciously in determining which material should be deleted. Still, I would have appreciated knowing, if only generally, why committee members ruled the way they did in each instance. That said, most of the deletions seem prompted primarily by concerns about invasions of privacy. While I personally believe that such expectations end at death, I realize that others may feel differently.

Besides a genuine interest in making these materials widely available, an additional motivation was to extend copyright protection to some of the Church's historical manuscripts. Since much of the Church's previously unpublished manuscript holdings entered the public domain on 1 January 2003, one hopes that extending copyright protection was at most a secondary, reason. Turley states this claim to copyright explicitly in his introduction:

The materials in this set continue to enjoy legal protection under both United States and international copyright law. They may not, as a consequence, be exploited in violation of that law. On the other hand, since copyright protects expression and not ideas, publication of this set facilitates the free flow of the ideas contained in these records. The fair use provisions of copyright law also make it possible to borrow a limited amount of expression, without the permission of the copyright owner, for such purposes as scholarly research and teaching. This balance of protecting expression while promoting intellectual discourse should satisfy the research and publication needs of most users. (3)

To discourage republication of the images, each scan contains the faintly printed words "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Archives" running vertically. Only rarely does this underlying image hinder readability.

While not wanting to embark on a lengthy discussion of copyright issues, I think it is worth noting that for one to claim copyright to someone else's work (not in the public domain), he must demonstrate that the individual legally transferred to him, not just the document(s), but the literary rights as well. (For more, see my "Copyright and Fair Use for Mormon Historians," Journal of Mormon History 28 [Spring 2002]: 52-66, and the accompanying article, "A Bundle of Rights" by attorney Morris A. Thurston, pp. 67-80.) Consequently, and while emphasizing that I could be wrong, I would suggest that the following documents/collections entered the public domain on 1 January 2003, despite their inclusion in Selected Collections, since their authors' descendants never legally surrendered their copyrights to a second party: James Bleak's "Annals of the Southern Utah Mission"; large portions (if not all) of Joseph Smith's collection; Joseph F. Smith's journal, incoming correspondence, and letterpress copybooks; Lorenzo Snow's journal and letterbook; Erastus Snow's journal; Willard Richards's papers; Orson Pratt's autobiography and journal; George A. Smith's papers; Franklin D. Richards's journal; Charles C. Rich's collection; and Amasa Lyman's collection. In addition, large portions (if not all) of the histories of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, as well as of the Journal History, either entered the public domain long ago or contain documents to which the Church itself would probably agree it never possessed the copyright–for example,