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Show FALL 2013 pp 386-404_UHQ BReviews/pp.271-296 9/16/13 1:22 PM Page 386 BOOK REVIEWS Dale Morgan on the Mormons: Collected Works Part 1, 1939–1951. Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier, vol. 14. Edited by Richard L. Saunders. (Norman: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2012. 511 pp. Cloth, $45.00.) THIS IS THE FIRST volume of a proposed two-volume set focused on the collected writings of Dale L. Morgan about the Mormons. Morgan (1914–1971) is perhaps best known for his books Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West; The West of William H. Ashley; The Humboldt: Highroad of the West; The Great Salt Lake; and the two-volume set Overland in 1846: Diaries and Letters of the California-Oregon Trail. Morgan was also a major contributor to and editor of the Utah Historical Quarterly, volume nineteen (1951), West from Fort Bridger. Richard Saunders is an insightful editor, and he places Morgan’s writings within their context through careful arrangement and analysis. Saunders sets off the ten chapters detailing areas of Morgan’s research, writing, and interests with a discussion of editorial procedures and a biographical introduction to Morgan and his interest and involvement with the Latterday Saints. Saunders studied Morgan and his work for two decades with the intent of writing a biography. The editor acknowledges that, for him, Morgan’s work on the Mormons and the doctrine of the restoration “set the boundaries of Morgan’s intellectual approach to history. . . . The Mormons had been the magnet which attracted him to history in the first place, it was the realm in which his approach to history and historical method solidified, and Mormonism was a subject to which he tried vainly to return throughout his career” (17). In choosing what the two volumes about Morgan and the Mormons should contain, Saunders perused the seventy-six boxes and twenty-seven cartons of the Dale L. Morgan Papers at the Bancroft Library. Morgan’s research and writing is the focus of this book, but of perhaps equal importance are the comments and analysis put forward by Saunders as he looks over Morgan’s shoulder and dissects Morgan’s careful thinking. Each of the ten chapters begins with an editor’s introduction. Some of Morgan’s work has been previously published, as with “Utah: A Guide to the State”; reviews of books by Richard Scowcroft, Maurine Whipple, Fawn Brodie,Virginia Sorenson, Wendell Ashton, and Samuel W. Taylor; and writings by Morgan for contract, including the Oliver Olney papers and James Strang papers. Morgan’s review of Brodie’s No Man Knows My History is of particular interest. Brodie identified Morgan in her acknowledgments as a friend whose “indefatigable scholarship in Mormon history” was of significant help and who “not only shared freely with me his superb library and manuscript files, but also went through the manuscript with 386 |
