Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism: Correspondence & a New History

Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism

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Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism
Correspondence & a New History
JOHN PHILLIP WALKER, EDITOR
WILLIAM MULDER, PREFACE
Hardback. 424 Pages. / 0-941214-36-2 / $20.95

BEST BOOK, JOHN WHITMER HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
BEST DOCUMENTARY BOOK, MORMON HISTORY ASSOC.

For Dale Lowell Morgan (1914-71), author of such classics of American historiography as The Humboldt: Highroad of the West, Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West, and The West of William H. Ashley, Mormonism occupied and fascinated him as no other subject could. Until his untimely death in 1971, he labored for close to thirty years on what would have been a definitive history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Unfortunately, of a projected three volumes, only the first seven chapters and two appendices were completed.

Yet despite the passage of more than twenty years, these chapters and appendices remain today as fresh and as thought-provoking as ever. Morgan's naturalistic approach to the formative years of the Mormon church may be challenging to some readers, but it represents what was and still is the cutting edge in the study of Mormon origins. Together with the inclusion of fifty of his letters to contemporaries such as Juanita Brooks, Fawn Brodie, Bernard DeVoto, Madeline McQuown, Stanley Ivins, and others, Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism provides a glimpse into the skill, talent, and artistry of one of America's premier historians.

John Phillip Walker, editor of Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism: Correspondence and a New History, lives in Salt Lake City where he is vice president of marketing for Magic Chemical Company. He also owns a management consulting business.

William Mulder is Professor of English at the University of Utah. His publications include Homeward to Zion: The Mormon Migration from Scandinavia and Among the Mormons: Historic Accounts by Contemporary Observers.