By November 12, 2008
Ben’s great book notice on the forthcoming book on Joseph Smith got me thinking about what other books of interest are nearing publication or have been recently published dealing with Mormon History ( and a few dealing generally with Utah history). If I miss any, please let me know and I’ll add it. If you know of any other rumored works, don’t hesitate to share.
By October 21, 2008
Incredibly, the Juvenile Instructor is approaching it’s 1st year anniversary. We went live on October 26, 2007. We hope to have a little historical write up nearer that time about how all this got going. In the mean time, I wanted to put up some posts you might have missed since our beginning. There are too many good ones to put them all up, but here’s a sampling from our first months:
By October 15, 2008
Admin Note: We’re pleased to have Joe Geisner, a frequent reader and knowledgeable commenter here at the JI post his review of the newly published James H. Martineau journals.
By September 14, 2008
Here are my notes from the panel discussion on Polygamy and Fundamentalism. Michael Homer asked questions with B. Carmon Hardy, Martha Bradley, Michael Marquardt, and Gordon Melton (Institute for the Study of American Religion) as panelists:
By September 13, 2008
I had the chance yesterday to attend three of four sessions of the USHS’s Annual Conference in the Salt Lake City Library. This was my first time attending this conference. It was free to the public. This was a smaller conference than any I’ve ever been to. Each of the four sessions had a choice of three presentations. A number of authors were in attendance including Carmon Hardy, Michael Homer, Katherine Daynes, Glen Leonard, Will Bagley, Noel Carmack, Michael Marquardt, Robert Carter, Marty Bradley, Reid Nielson, Ron Walker, and others.
Here are my notes from Reid Nielson’s presentation:
By September 8, 2008
On August 12, 2008, Ron Walker, Glen Leonard, and Richard Turley were at Salt Lake City’s Benchmark Books for a book signing and discussion. Again, our friend, the indefatigable Brent Brizzi was on hand and has provided the Juvenile Instructor with a transcript of the evening’s proceedings. It’s somewhat long, but all good, so I will post it parts. Before doing so, I just want to summarize for readers a few Mountain Meadows Massacre items that have been in the news lately:
By September 8, 2008
Ronald Walker: What an honor it is for us to be here with you, we’re honored by your presence, and by all this attention, historians aren’t used to this kind of, this kind of excitement, so thank you so much. I think what we want to do tonight is each one of us take maybe five, six, seven minutes to give you a feel for the book, and some of our thinking about the book, and then I think the uh, the vast majority of the time, I think we all agree should be Q&A. That’ll be the most fun.
By September 8, 2008
Richard Turley: I would like to talk a little bit about our methodology in writing the book, when we launched this project, our goal was not to work principally from the secondary sources that had been created in the past, but rather to find every primary source that we could find, and then let that evidence tell the story, and that task sent us, or those who were assisting us across the country looking for Mountain Meadows Massacre information, because this was a celebrated case during it’s time, and because the people who either participated in the massacre or later investigated it got scattered across the country, the bits and pieces were scattered like a giant jigsaw puzzle across the continent.
By September 8, 2008
Glen Leonard: In his comments in reviewing the book prior to publication, Richard Bushman mentioned this, “Though I knew the end from the beginning, I began to sweat as the narrative approached its fatal climax. The authors won’t let us turn our gaze away from the horrors of that moment”. One of the copy editors said something similarly, “this is a page turner, she said”. [pause] I’d like to turn a few pages. I’d like to take you into the book, and give you a sample of the narrative, as an illustration of what we were trying to accomplish by taking the facts, drawing our conclusions, and then casting them into a narrative voice.
By September 8, 2008
Curt Bench: I’m sure you will agree that was a tremendous, brief presentation, a good introduction to the book. Now we’d like to entertain any questions you may have, if you’d like to raise your hand we’ll get to you as soon as we can, and if you have a certain author in mind, just designate that OK.
Q: To any and all of you, is it true that they, the perpetrators held prayer circles just prior to the massacre? And if so what does this say about their mindset at the time?
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