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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 91-104_UHQ BReviews/pp.271-296 12/5/12 9:50 AM Page 98 UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY at times, skipping some details while focusing on others, always seeking to demonstrate the divine hand in their journey. For his part, Neilson demonstrates his expertise in international religious history, asserting that the account of the tour “is one of the more significant texts in the historical canon of global Mormon studies” because it narrates a journey that transformed the faith, through its future leader David O. McKay, into a global religion (ix). Though more than ninety years old, the text has significance for students of modern Mormonism. While the tale narrates globetrotting adventures, the book is important for western American history because it demonstrates how two prominent Utahns and the church they served interacted with the outside world in the 1920s. The mission transformed David O. McKay, and he later transformed his Utah-based church because of it. As Neilson argues, the journey reshaped the faith’s global worldview, laying the groundwork for its modern international initiatives. Cannon concluded that “the most wonderful thing [they] saw on this journey around the world” was the gospel’s “effect upon mankind”(155, 158). The account demonstrates how an expanded appreciation for the peoples of the world affects church leaders, helping them fulfill the charge to take the gospel to all nations. SCOTT C. ESPLIN Brigham Young University The Guardian Poplar: A Memoir of Deep Roots, Journey, and Rediscovery. By Chase Nebeker Peterson. (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2012. xx + 300 pp. Cloth, $39.95.) IS IT POSSIBLE to review a memoir without also commenting on the memoirist’s own life? Though I had read of Chase N. Peterson before turning to the recently published autobiography–of his contributions to Utah’s educational landscape, his career as a medical doctor, his years at Harvard followed by his years at the University of Utah, and finally news of his cancer diagnosis–I had never met him in person. I still haven’t, but based on his touching, engaging memoir, I regret never having done so. Approaching his mid-eighties, Peterson emerges in his autobiography as intelligent and driven, personable, broad-minded, compassionate. He is a man fully engaged with the world; animated as much by science as by Mozart; compelled by both belief and skepticism; as much in love as ever with his wife and muse of more than fifty years, Grethe Ballif. Peterson’s narrative is episodic and conversational, and may not be as 98 |
