Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Viper On The Hearth, Updated Edition, Mickell J. Summerhays, Terryl L. Givens

BYU Studies Quarterly

Terryl L. Givens, the well-known Mormon author, is a professor of literature and religion and is the James A. Bostwick Professor of English at the University of Richmond, Virginia. He has authored books such as By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion and The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life.

Many may be familiar with Givens's classic study on Mormon literature entitled The Viper on the Hearth. It is known as one of the most in-depth studies of anti-Mormon literary texts. Givens himself calls this a look at "the long …

Shifting Borders And A Tattered Passport: Intellectual Journeys Of A Mormon Academic, Roger Terry, Armand L. Mauss

BYU Studies Quarterly

"When the intellectual history of late-twentieth-century Mormonism is written," begins Richard Bushman in the foreword to this memoir, "Armand Mauss will occupy a preeminent position." For this reason alone, Mauss's reminiscences should be of interest to any serious student of Mormonism.

Mauss takes his title from the following quote by Neal A. Maxwell: "The LDS scholar has his citizenship in the Kingdom, but carries his passport into the professional world--not the other way around." But Mauss's observation that the borders have shifted over time and his passport is tattered reminds us that travel between the Church and the world is …

Fire In The Pasture: Twenty-First Century Mormon Poets, Angela Hallstrom, Tyler Chadwick

BYU Studies Quarterly

In the foreword to the poetry anthology Fire in the Pasture, poet and BYU English professor Susan Elizabeth Howe explains that a poet's desire is "to make readers see what they did not see before, to offer insight, to create empathy, to provoke thought, or to express beauty, soundness, depth." Editor Tyler Chadwick, a poet and doctoral candidate in English at Idaho State University, has gathered into one substantial volume the work of eighty-two contemporary Mormon poets, and the majority succeed in conjuring the emotional, spiritual, and aesthetic rewards Howe describes.

This anthology is the first major collection of poetry …

The Savior In Kirtland, R Mark Melville, Karl R. Anderson

BYU Studies Quarterly

Karl Ricks Anderson has lived in Kirtland, Ohio, for more than forty years, and his studies and time there have made him one of the leading authorities on the Kirtland period of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1994, Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles asked Anderson to write about the Christology of Kirtland. The Savior in Kirtland is the final product of Anderson's eighteen-year project.

The book is extensively researched and would appeal to anyone interested in anecdotes from Church history. The research will be helpful to scholars, but the information …

Bountiful Harvest: Essays In Honor Of S. Kent Brown, Andrew C. Skinner, Carl W. Griffin, David J. Larsen, D Morgan Davis

BYU Studies Quarterly

Bountiful Harvest is a collection of essays written and assembled in honor of S. Kent Brown, recently retired professor of ancient scripture and Near Eastern studies at Brigham Young University. An impressive array of colleagues, former students, teachers, admirers, and friends of Professor Brown have contributed to this handsome volume, resulting in twenty-one essays that are a worthy tribute to Brown's legacy. The volume includes an introduction by the editors in well-deserved praise of Brown's career and significant achievements, and also an appendix listing his many published works.

Bountiful Harvest presents something of interest for almost all readers. Although most …

Tiki And Temple: The Mormon Mission In New Zealand, 1854–1958, A. Keith Thompson, Marjorie Newton

BYU Studies Quarterly

Writing Church history is an art form that has developed significantly in the last twenty years. Historical facts recited without reference to the spirit of revelation that guides the work of God in the last days can be spiritually sterile. However, a fearful focus on how certain materials might affect the faith of readers can damage the color and texture of any historiographical account. Often, the personal failings of the players in LDS religious history serve to underscore the Lord's hand in his work--as readers infer that it could not have worked out as it did but for divine influence. …

Historical Context Of The Doctrine And Covenants And Other Modern Scriptures, Volume 1, Kurt Elieson, J. B. Haws

BYU Studies Quarterly

Kurt Elieson's Historical Context of the Doctrine and Covenants and Other Modern Scriptures is a nice self-published surprise. Elieson, a Texas attorney, saw a hole in the corpus of Doctrine and Covenants commentaries and study guides, and he aimed to fill it. He has succeeded on several fronts.

...Elieson has woven together in one helpful book an up-to-date and remarkably thorough collection of diary accounts and documentary evidence to give depth and context to the story of the receipt (and, importantly, the early circulation) of Joseph Smith's revelations. Because of that, Elieson's book should earn a place on many desks …

Pansy's History: The Autobiography Of Margaret E. P. Gordon, 1866–1966, Maggie Gallup Kopp, Claudia L. Bushman

BYU Studies Quarterly

Margaret Gordon's memoir, composed over several decades, is notable for the author's clear voice and independent spirit, as well as her detailed accounts of frontier life, financial and family hardships, church service, and transcontinental travel. This book will provide new sources of study for historians of frontier life in northern Utah and Alberta and especially of the experience of Mormon women in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bushman has annotated her grandmother's manuscript and provides family correspondence and excerpts from Gordon's diaries to supplement the main narrative, enriching it as a potential source for scholarly inquiry and expanding a …

The Tree Of Life: From Eden To Eternity, Liza Olsen, John W. Welch, Donald W. Parry

BYU Studies Quarterly

One of humankind's most sacred and abiding symbols is the tree of life. From earliest recorded religious belief, that singular image encompassed the sense of our humanity, rooted deeply in this earthly life with branches stretching outward, heavenward, in hope of the divine. From the Garden of Eden to Lehi's dream, tree of life imagery is particularly evocative within Mormonism, and many contributors to this book are Latter-day Saints writing from scholarly and religious points of view. The tree likewise takes a central place in the development of various human belief systems. Scholars whose works appear in this collection explore …

And Should We Die . . .: The Cane Creek Mormon Massacre, Mickell J. Summerhays, Donald R. Curtis

BYU Studies Quarterly

Donald R. Curtis, a Kentucky native, has a passion for early Church history, particularly in Kentucky and the South. Curtis's work has been featured in publications such as The Kentucky Encyclopediaand the Kentucky Explorer. In this book, Curtis presents the account of the lesser-known massacre in Mormon history at Cane Creek, Tennessee. The Cane Creek Mormon Massacre gives a detailed account from multiple points of view of how a Sunday worship service turned into a violent incident that left five dead and one wounded.

Curtis is able to put the massacre in the context of the greater Mormon movement, …

The Man Behind The Discourse: A Biography Of King Follett, Joann F. Mortensen, Emily H. Bates

BYU Studies Quarterly

Joann Mortensen, a third great-granddaughter of King and Louisa Follett, has long been involved in documenting the lives of her ancestors. Her book, The Man Behind the Discourse, is the first published biography of King Follett, the man whose funeral sermon became known as one of the Prophet Joseph Smith's greatest discourses.

Mortensen has structured the book to be accessible to a wide audience. For those less familiar with the Church, a short, simple introduction to the beliefs of the Saints stands at the beginning of the book, and a "brief overview of Joseph Smith's life and prophetic mission" (59) …

A Firm Foundation: Church Organization And Administration, R. Mark Melville, David J. Whittaker, Arnold K. Garr

BYU Studies Quarterly

While A Firm Foundation as a whole will appeal mainly to Church scholars and those interested in organizational theory, each of its individual articles offers an important synthesis of information for those who are interested in a particular topic. For example, a musician researching the history of the hymnbook would be interested in Michael Hicks's article "How to Make (and Unmake) a Mormon Hymnbook," and a newly called Young Women president might be intrigued by Janet Peterson's article "Young Women of Zion: An Organizational History." The book is broad enough that there is something of interest for everyone, from a …

No Weapon Shall Prosper: New Light On Sensitive Issues, R. Mark Melville, Robert L. Millet

BYU Studies Quarterly

No Weapon Shall Prosper is a valuable resource for those who are curious about, or even troubled by, some of the less discussed or more controversial aspects of Mormonism. The Internet has allowed anti-Mormon arguments to gain greater ground, and this book respectfully but unapologetically responds to such arguments. In a concluding chapter at the end of the book, Millet notes that despite all of the evidence--or lack thereof--that might exist for a certain viewpoint, it is ultimately the words of the prophets and apostles, as confirmed to us by the Holy Ghost, that enable us to know spiritual truths.