Book Reviews

Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young.

By RONALD W (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. xxiv + 399 pp. Cloth, $49.95; paper, $25.00.)

Called "The New Movement" or the Godbeite Revolt when it occurred in the fall of 1869, it has been largely forgotten by many Mormons. While it was a strong expression of disagreement with Brigham Young's authoritarian leadership by British intellectuals such as William S. Godbe and E. L. T. Harrison, it was by no means halfbaked.

The rebellion was over quickly, but in the process a press was established, articles were written, a rival church was established, and a lecture hall was built. In the end, important questions were raised about the issue of religious authority.

Ronald Walker, professor of history and senior research historian at Brigham Young University, has written scores of perceptive, thought-provoking articles about various phases of Mormon history Without question, this is his best work to date, an eloquent and perceptive treatment of the intellectual history of the early Latterday Saints It is clearly marked by the author's gift for the written word. Each sentence is so carefully crafted as to be both dramatic and moving. In the best tradition of the historian's craft, Walker literally makes the past come alive.

Instead of focusing angrily on dissenters as divisive heretics, as some Mormon historians have done, Walker treats the Godbeites as talented people of ideas, deserving of the term intellectual. He believes dissent helps to define the personality of a religious movement and that the Godbeites served that role admirably in the history of Mormonism.

Moreover, Walker has shed important light on the usually forgotten spiritualist movement of early Utah In an unusually effective way to engage the reader, he begins the book with the arraignment of several Godbeite leaders before the Salt Lake School of the Prophets in October 1869.

The offense was an article in Godbe's Utah Magazine suggesting that Mormon readers avoid "blind obedience" and that they test any religious teaching by "the light of their own souls." Religious obedience in Brigham Young's Utah was, as Walker says, "a highly prized and almost unchallenged virtue in Zion—at least to members of the Mormon leadership."

An angry Brigham Young addressed the School of the Prophets and expressed dismay at "a great and secret rebellion that would shake the entire church." He singled out Godbe, Harrison, Thomas Stenhouse, Edward Tullidge, and several others for having generated a crisis of authority.

The issue for Godbe was whether Brigham Young as LDS president had the right to dictate "in all things temporal and spiritual." The Godbeites were thinkers who prized their own right of choice and thought all Mormons deserved the same consideration. Over several chapters, Walker traces the beginnings of each of the socalled intellectuals of the Godbeite movement, telling tireir stories in vivid terms, placing them in the perspective of Mormon history.

The single most bothersome problem for the Godbeites was Brigham Young's use of an iron hand over commercial activity. Young threatened to excommunicate all Mormons who bought non-Mormon goods. The group of intellectuals believed that, in making the gentile embargo a test of church fellowship, Young had "crossed the line of reasonable and acceptable behavior."

As the story unfolds, Walker succeeds in demonstrating that "dissent and schism serve to help define what a religious community accepts and what it believes in." In fact, Walker's work most aptly implies that it is always the written word that acts as a lightning rod for those who may disagree with church leaders—even in the 20th century.

In this case, the written word proceeded from the Utah Magazine to the weekly newspaper the Mormon Tribune, designed to champion "the noblest truths of religion," and finally to the daily newspaper, the Salt Lake Tribune, which became the most volatile critic of the LDS church.

Walker's forthright interpretation inevitably reminds the thoughtful reader of modern-day schisms and confrontations between intellectuals and LDS leaders, such as Sonia Johnson and her excommunication over her activities on behalf of the ERA in the 1970s, and the more recent purge of intellectuals such as Paul Toscano and Lavina Fielding Anderson over historical interpretations as written in LDS intellectual journals such as Sunstone and Dialogue in the 1990s.

Although ecclesiastical court action was carried out in the modern cases by local LDS leaders, it was done with the express approval of the General Authorities. This means that Walker's book on the Godbeites has unusual relevance to the present day and Mormonism's continuing struggle with its intellectuals. There is still a major struggle between church leaders and a significant group of the LDS rank and file over the principle of absolute obedience.

Walker succeeds to a remarkable degree in portraying the Godbeites as believable, reasonable human beings who had a clear and understandable disagreement with LDS church authority. He has not produced a polemic but a fair, scholarly treatment of this important "New Movement" that gives early Mormon development unusual balance.

Those who are drawn to Mormon history but prefer to read it in novelized form should rush to pick up Walker's book They will find that truthful history need not be dry and dull When written by a historian of Walker's grace and gifts of expression, the real story of the Mormon past becomes instantly more interesting than any multi-volume work of historical fiction.

DENNIS LYTHGOE University of Utah

Mormon Midwife: The 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions.

Edited by DONNA TOLAND SMART (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1997 xiv + 457 pp $29.95.)

In 1964 the University of Utah Press published the diaries of Hosea Stout, edited byjuanita Brooks, which outlined a man's life and Mormon experience in Nauvoo, Winter Quarters, the trek West, and settling Salt Lake City.

The recently published Mormon Midwife: The 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions, edited by Donna Toland Smart, chronicles a Mormon woman's life during the same period.

Comparing the personal writings of these two individuals shows some gender differences in point of view For example, during the week of August 1-7, 1851, Sessions wrote of taking a sister through a "course of medicine," attending church, delivering a baby, cleaning garden seed, finishing a dress, and sewing carpet rags (her work at home). In contrast, Stout also worked at home, but he did not indicate what that work was He helped "all hands" in digging a cellar for the tabernacle, and attended church He also reported a general election and listed the winners.

The book is the second volume in Utah State University Press's series on frontier women, and, like the first volume published last year (Maurine Ward's Winter Quarters: The Diaries of Mary Haskins Parker Richards), it won the Handcart Award from the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies Its significance lies in the historical facts Sessions recorded while she narrated her life. We see a woman's domestic and professional life in Nauvoo, Winter Quarters, and along the trail, and also witness her contribution to early Utah education, horticulture, economy, and community health.

While Sessions is remembered as a midwife, she was also a savvy businesswoman who used her skills to provide for her family and to help form the economic basis of her community In fact, starting with bartering, Sessions amassed enough money to give yearly donations to her church, to fund a school, and to care for her needs independent of her two husbands, David Sessions and, later, John Parry.

Her diaries are filled with her contribution to horticulture as she collected wild strawberries on the trail and domesticated them in her Utah garden. In addition, she cultivated saplings for her orchards and traded or sold some to others She observed and recorded the beginnings of Mormon irrigation in Utah in November 1849 when she wrote of the men cutting a ditch that she and many others benefitted from.

Her voluminous domestic skills are revealed as she wrote of weaving rugs, piecing and making quilts, carding wool, spinning, and dying and weaving cloth She knitted stockings and made gaiters, wristlets, and quilted petticoats, braided straw hats, and fashioned artificial flowers and wreaths The sheer volume of her production, along with her practice of midwifery and planting and harvesting, is staggering.

Smart tells us in the introduction that Sessions learned midwifery in her early years, and her diaries indicate that she delivered hundreds of babies. She carefully recorded names, charges, and payments for these deliveries and for other medical care given.

One can't help but compare Smart's treatment of Sessions's diary with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale. Ulrich took sample entries from Martha Ballard's diaries to introduce each chapter, then used them as the basis for reconstructing Ballard's life in more detail and setting her activities into the broader context of women's and local history in her environment.

In contrast, rather than analyze the diaries to produce a community social history, Smart lets the readers draw their own conclusions. She uses her introduction to briefly discuss the importance of Sessions's life in its historical context and then lets the diary speak for itself, with some footnotes to clarify entries as needed.

The volume contains the complete text of seven diaries kept by Sessions from 1846 to 1888. Smart begins each diary with a short preface and then includes the complete text. As a result, reading the same types of entries over and over, especially in the later diaries, sometimes becomes tedious But the fact that Sessions made daily entries (as did Stout) provides a more accurate account than reminiscences or memoirs. Thus, for the historian and the domestic or social scientist the diaries are a gold mine of information.

Two appendices contain the contents of an account book kept by Sessions and also a listing of family members. Smart's valiant efforts in identifying the many individuals named in the diaries and explaining various references of events and practices far exceeds Brooks's editing and adds to the usefulness of the book for historians, genealogists, and interested readers. Also of value are the pictures of people and places, a sample page of the diaries, and photographs of items important to Sessions's life. These include one shot of a loom similar to one she used and the title page, table of contents, and two illustrations of a medical book that guided her in delivering babies. An extensive index includes the names of all individuals named as well as subjects covered.

USU Press should be complimented for their excellence in producing a second award-winning book in two years From the high-quality binding, paper, and reproduction of photos to the press's commitment to publishing Utah and Mormon history, it is emerging as an equal to more well-known publishers in the field of history.

AUDREY M GODFREY Logan, Utah

The Ute Indians of Colorado in the Twentieth Century.

By RICHARD K. YOUNG. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997 xiv + 362 pp $29.95.)

Histories of American Indians in the West usually focus on their nineteenthcentury experiences. Twentieth-century tribal histories are few, often lacking solid research and without interpretative depth With The Ute Indians of Colorado in the Twentieth Century, Richard K. Young successfully counters these trends and presents a well-researched and readable book on two tribes of Colorado that have previously received little scholarly or publisher attention.

As the author notes, while both the Southern Utes and the Ute Mountain Utes—the only two American Indian tribes with federally recognized reservations in Colorado—have lived in parts of Colorado for centuries and side-by-side in southwestern Colorado for over 100 years, their historical and cultural experiences and development differ in remarkable ways How these differences developed throughout the twentieth century despite the two groups being closely related by a common language and culture makes for a complex and unique story that is well presented by the author.

Richard Young helps the reader understand these common relationships through a brief discussion of pretwentieth century Ute history, a time when the various bands of Utes controlled two-thirds of the present state of Colorado and flourished as a power to be reckoned with by Plains and Southwest Indians, as well as by Spanish and Mexican government officials, settlers, and traders However, by 1900 the Utes' Colorado domain had been reduced to two small reservations in the remote southwestern corner of the state. In the author's overview of how these events occurred, he notes that the citizens of Colorado, supported by their congressional representatives, made every effort to have the two groups completely removed from the state to a proposed reservation in southeastern Utah These efforts failed, and the ensuing history is a remarkable, often heartbreaking, description of the experiences of two peoples as they have fought for survival throughout the century.

Young vividly details a history where the cost to both tribes was extremely high in human life, quality of life, and the continuation of traditional values; yet, by the end of the twentieth century and one hundred years after the establishment of the two reservations, both the Southern Utes and the Ute Mountain Utes are still located on traditional lands and better positioned today to meet their tribal members' needs for a meaningful, quality lifestyle.

The strength of Richard Young's book is presented through eight chapters that describe the accommodation of both tribes to a harsh reservation life, with erratic and inadequate federal government support, while trying to learn basic skills to first become farmers, then small business owners and entrepreneurs, depending on what federal policy was in vogue during this one-hundred-year period. Of special note is the author's presentation on the 1930s, with its New Deal programs; the 1950s, when the two tribes successfully settled their aboriginal land title rights with the federal government; and a more recent period when the tribes have developed new and creative economic strategies for supporting their own tribal members. The story of how tribal leadership developed within the Southern Utes and the Ute Mountain Utes from the 1930s through the early 1990s is an important contribution of this book.

As the core documentation of his history, Mr.Young uses the earlier research of such individuals as Floyd A O'Neil, Robert W Delaney, James Jefferson, David Lewis, Robert McPhearson, and Omer C Stewart and his Tri-Ethnic Project collection; Ute tribal archives; the National Archives holdings of the Bureau of Indian Affairs records; and a series of interviews conducted with tribal members and leaders. Unfortunately, the author does not seem to have used the Duke Indian Oral History collections at the University of Utah and at the University of New Mexico Nor is there an indication that he consulted other Ute sources housed in the libraries of Brigham Young University, the University of Utah, the Utah State Historical Society, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Historical Department, as well as those archives held by the Allen Canyon Utes and located on the White Mesa Reservation While the author does describe the 1911 taking of lands that presently comprise Mesa Verde National Park, he does not explain the controversy and the feelings generated within the Ute Mountain Utes. Throughout his life, Ute Mountain Ute Chief Jack House felt betrayed and deceived by the federal government in the creation of this national monument.

Despite these criticisms, Richard Young has written an important book that should be required reading for those teaching Colorado history and that should be of interest to both the citizens and visitors to the states of Colorado and Utah. Published by the University of Oklahoma Press, Mr. Young's book is well designed, easy to read, and well illustrated.

GREGORY C THOMPSON University of Utah

Crossing the Plains: New and Fascinating Accounts of the Hardships, Controversies and Courage Experienced and Chronicled by the 1847 Pioneers on the Mormon Trail.

Compiled and edited by HAROLD SCHINDLER (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Tribune, 1997. 274 pp. Paper, $9.95.)

"It looked as though the face of the Earth was alive and moving like the waves of the sea," said Wilford Woodruff in 1847 as he beheld in wonder the prairie covered with buffalo from horizon to horizon. One of the Mormon pioneer company under Brigham Young, the apostle and his 147 companions would see other memorable sights before they reached their destination that summer.

Many have told the story of this historic journey but none better than Harold Schindler whose day-to-day accounts last year in the Salt Lake Tribune to honor the 150th anniversary of the arrival of Mormon pioneers in Utah have now been compiled in book form The value of this splendid series is enhanced by Dennis Green's distinctive cover and double maps that show each day's travel in relation to present landmarks as well as the overall trail.

Using diaries, letters, and journals, including the recently published 1847 Thomas Bullock account, Utah's leading journalist-historian offers a richly detailed picture of the American West and its inhabitants during the nineteenth century In addition to Indians, emigrants, and mountain men, he covers wildlife (including fish, birds, and snakes), vegetation, and historic trail sites such as Scotts Bluff, Fort Laramie, Independence Rock, and Fort Bridger.

Especially helpful to those unacquainted with this story—who, oddly, include many Mormons today— Schindler includes a brief history of the Mormons prior to their move west. To add historical perspective, he also gives information on significant events involving Brigham Young's followers elsewhere, such as the Mormon Battalion in California and later emigrant companies.

The author forthrightly identifies the road on the north side of the Platte River as the unique avenue of the Mormon emigration as pointed out on May 7 by Orson Pratt, who said, "Since we left Loup Ford, we have had to make our own trail." While Congress affirmed this when it created the Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail in 1978, a few historians have wrongly challenged the designation.

At Fort Laramie, where this route crossed the North Platte, Young's 1847 company met the head of the westering emigration and other travelers, going both ways on the interstate highway of its day, the Oregon Trail. After that, Mormon pioneers had to get an early start each day to avoid eating "gentile" dust and to be the first to reach a good camping place with water, grass, and firewood.

Just one of many fascinating stories relates the invention of the famous Mormon "roadometer," an ingenious device for measuring distance. With some justification, William Clayton, Orson Pratt, and Appleton Milo Harmon all claimed the credit, but the machine really came about because Clayton got tired of counting the turns of a wagon wheel to estimate mileage. Necessity proved to be the mother of cooperation as well as invention when Mormons and old persecutors from Missouri teamed up to cross the runoffswollen North Platte at today's Casper, Wyoming.

Whether one is a trails buff or an environmentalist, he will enjoy and learn from this book It is filled with information and is so well written that it is a delight to read.

DAVID L BIGLER Roseville, California

A History of Hispanics in Southern Nevada.

By M.L MIRANDA (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1997. xvii + 262 pp. $29.95.)

M.L. Miranda's work adds to a recent trend in Chicano studies: the examination of Hispanic communities outside "traditional" areas of concentration (such as Texas and California) In his introduction, Miranda acknowledges that this type of study has both benefits and disadvantages On the positive side, such works introduce the historical profession and readers to previously ignored communities of Spanish speakers in the West. On the other hand, the limited number and variety of sources place severe limitations on the work. But the paucity of historical source material does not lessen the importance of the contributions of Spanish-speaking people to a state's history.

The first five chapters of this work examine the presence of Hispanics in the Nevada area from Spanish colonial times through 1910. In this portion of the book the influence of recent Chicano scholarship is apparent Miranda focuses upon the discrimination and dual wage system faced by Hispanics working for the railroad and mining industries. But unlike previous Chicano works, his book moves beyond a simplistic representation of all Spanish speakers as victims and all Anglos as greedy oppressors. This work emphasizes the diversity of experience that shaped racial interaction in early Nevada history. One of this work's strengths is its skillful and complex representation of interactions between these two groups over time.

Chapters six through nine detail the arrival of larger groups of Hispanics into southern Nevada during the period between the end of World War I and 1970. The author effectively uses a variety of sources (such as school, court, census, and county records) to provide information on topics such as housing segregation, crime rates, the role of Hispanics in the gaming and entertainment industry, and the diversity within the Spanish-speaking community of Nevada and, in particular, Las Vegas.

The final chapters bring this history up to the present and further highlight the heterogeneity of this group Miranda examines the Chicano movement and the coming together of Hispanics in an attempt to improve their economic and social standing. While this movement produced benefits, the successes of Chicanismo served to divide Hispanics in the 1980s and 1990s The unity that helped generate a call for reform during the 1970s was undermined by the rise of an Hispanic middle class and by the arrival of Spanish speakers with different political views (Cuban Americans, in particular) .

This work fits squarely within the newest trends of Chicano historiography It examines a community outside "traditional" areas of Hispanic concentration and demonstrates that not all Spanish speakers share similar class, political, and social interests. It is a fine addition to the historical literature on Spanish-speaking people of the Southwest.

JORGE IBER Texas Tech University Lubbock

Cowboys and Cave Dwellers: Basketmaker Archaeology in Utah's Grand Gulch.

By FRED M BLACKBURN and RAY A WILLIAMSON (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1997 viii + 188 pp Cloth, $50.00; paper, $25.00.)

This is a wonderful book! I read it one lazy Sunday afternoon feeling under the weather and was easily and willingly transported to the land of deep slickrock canyons, sage, and pinyon-and-juniper—the land of cliff dwellers and tantalizing human history This is the very land that captivated the members of the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Project and drove them to travel across the continent (more than once) to study and discover and then study some more and infect others with their desire to learn of the history of the Basketmakers, those incredible people that once had the Gulch to themselves and knew it like no other people before or since.

This book blends three histories: one ancient and sparse, the story of the Basketmakers, ancestors to modern Puebloan peoples now living well to the south of Grand Gulch; another more detailed, yet still not totally told, of outsiders who came to Grand Gulch centuries after the Basketmaker departure and took wonderful objects away; and a third and final history (which is the real focus of the book), the story of the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Project and the unselfish desire of project members to bring all three histories home to the place where they happened— southeastern Utah.

The Wetherill-Grand Gulch Project tried something fresh, something they called "archaeology in reverse." Rather than removing artifacts from archaeological sites, they attempted re-connecting museum collections with the places from which they were removed a century ago. The authors relate the experiences of project members who tracked the routes of the Wetherills and others through the Gulch and numerous southeastern Utah canyons by following centuries-old signatures on cave walls, historic photographs, and personal journals They matched catalog numbers painted on objects with field notes, and they pored over photos of objects in place. Through this process they traced many objects to their original resting places and reprovenienced artifacts whose documentation had been lost Important sites were relocated The most dramatic rediscovery was long-lost Cave 7, where the Wetherills had found evidence of the early farmers now called Basketmakers and nearly a hundred skeletons, but whose location was unknown until now. The fruits of the project's efforts at reverse archaeology (in the form of several boxes of documents) were donated to the Edge of the Cedars Museum in Blanding at the 1990 Wetherill-Grand Gulch Symposium The symposium was also organized and funded by the efforts of the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Project.

The photographs presented here are a treasure. Excavated from the archives of the American Museum of Natural History, the Chicago Field Museum, Tulane University, the National Museum of Finland, and others are numerous seldom or neverbefore-seen images of excavations and excavators in the 1890s. They effectively project the reader a hundred years into the past when an important goal of "archaeology" was to satisfy the hungry exhibit cases of eastern museums We can see into the eyes of these "cowboy archaeologists" and into rude pits from which they shoveled eagerly sought artifacts The historic photos are occasionally juxtaposed with modern images, an effective technique that reveals dramatic change (p. 157) or, in some cases, preservation of Puebloan ruins (p.114). Outstanding among photos taken by project members are many by Bruce Hucko, whose work reminds me of the importance of having professional photographers on archaeological projects. The many pages of lush, even breathtaking, images in the section entitled "The Art and Artifacts of Grand Gulch" at once document and extol Ancestral Pueblo artisanship.

Many mummified human remains were excavated by the Wetherills and others, and a good many of the items pictured herein are burial goods. Yet sensitivity to Native American concerns is exceptional and evident in several ways in the text. The authors have abandoned the traditional nonPuebloan term Anasazi in favor of "Ancestral Pueblo" throughout And the treatment of burial goods and human remains is thoughtful and respectful. I was particular taken with the tone of the descriptions of grave offerings on pp.73-74 Gone are cold terms like the "sub-adult" and "adult male" typical of archaeological technical reports; in their place are "child" and "elderly man." Descriptions of the material goods are carefully crafted and rich in detailed attention to the more tactile senses. Following a useful review of Basketmaker archaeology since the 1890s (Chapter 6), the authors take the Bureau of Land Management to task for its management policies and practices in Grand Gulch These criticisms are accompanied by specific suggestions for improvement if this historic treasure is to be preserved for future research and visitation. They make the important point that vandalism by col-lectors continues to be a major problem, but serious damage is also inadvertently done to archaeological sites by the Grand Gulch-loving visitors Hiker numbers have grown dramatically of late, while BLM personnel has been reduced. The authors challenge the public generally to get involved in preservation efforts.

There are what I would characterize as minor structural problems in the book In places I felt the narrative bounced a little too freely from historic accounts to descriptions of the Grand Gulch research team activities, causing me to pause to re-gather loose threads (see for example the bottom of page 61). Also, near the end of Chapter 5, "Rediscovering Cave 7," the authors assess both the contributions of the Wetherills to archaeology and current perceptions of these free-wheeling excavators. This section seemed a little out of place in this chapter and might have fit more comfortably elsewhere, perhaps in Chapter 6.

The layout of the book is exceptional, with a pleasing mix of illustration and photographs, and reproductions are almost always technically excellent (exceptions are restricted to a couple of grainy black and white photos in Chapter 6). There are good endnotes for those who wish to dive deeper into the topics. Most important, the book is well written The text flows smoothly and clearly throughout I recommend this as a must-read for all students of the American Southwest.

JOEL C.JANETSKI Brigham Young University

Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation.

By MALCOLM J. ROHRBOUGH (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997 xx + 353 pp $29.95.)

In Days of Gold, Malcolm Rohrbough demonstrates that the discovery of gold at Sutter's mill in 1848 was not just an incident in California's history but an event that had profound repercussions felt everywhere in the nation. It triggered the largest mass migration in the history of the United States, which equally affected those who left for the California gold fields in their quest for an improved life and those they left behind It changed the fundamental values of marriage, family, work, and wealth, leaving a nation where "nothing was ever the same again." (p. 6)

Using a myriad of letters and diaries, Rohrbough tells the story of the Fortyniners from their individual decisions to leave for California, through the voyage and the work in the gold fields, to the often-painful return home and life at home itself—through the eyes of the individuals involved These first-hand memories account for the liveliness and strength of this study, which provides new insights into the gold rush migration.

For a long time, Americans had been accustomed to migrating Nevertheless, the gold rush proved to be a new experience insofar as it represented only a temporary move that separated husbands from wives and children from parents. On their departure, the Forty-niners often predicted the hardships that lay ahead of them but, as Rohrbough demonstrates, the consequences for those left behind were at least as severe, even if different The participants in this saga shared certain beliefs The argonauts, their families, and much of the rest of the nation viewed the gold rush as a continuation of the "American Dream" that rewarded hard work, honest endeavor, and right moral values. For the majority of Forty-niners, however, the gold rush soon proved to be "a lottery [where] only few players win" (p 259), making their return emotionally difficult and sometimes impossible, as failure seemed to imply a lack of effort.

Any study that relies almost completely on subjective first-hand accounts, as Rohrbough's history does, necessarily encounters certain problems The first, of course, is that of believability Rohrbough's portrait, for instance, of the Forty-niners' attitudes concerning the "entertainment industry" is particularly questionable. The majority of the argonauts by their own accounts viewed gamblers and prostitutes with derision. Yet this "industry" was able to prosper because of the willing involvement of the Forty-niners In this respect, it was disappointing to find so little time spent on the experiences of prostitutes in the gold rush In addition, a work that attempts to demonstrate the broader impact of the gold rush must spend more time than just two pages addressing the group that the movement most profoundly affected: the California Indians.

Days of Gold is nonetheless an important contribution to the history of the United States at the dawn of the Civil War. It is a necessary addition to the bookshelves of scholars and laymen alike, who will be captured by Rohrbough's entertaining writing style that elegantly intertwines first-hand accounts with historical narrative.

GERHARD GRYTZ University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Above a Common Soldier: Frank and Mary Clarke in the American West and Civil War, 1847-1872. Revised Edition.

Edited by DARLIS MILLER (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. xvii + 222 pp. $55.00.)

During the two decades before the Civil War, an average of 15,500 men served as enlisted soldiers annually, at least two-thirds of whom were foreign-born They had joined the army for a variety of reasons, but most were seeking opportunities for geographic, economic, occupational, or social mobility. Only a few of all soldiers would reach the coveted rank of noncommissioned officer during their tour in the army Most soldiers, foreign-born or not, were illiterate, and many of the foreigners could speak little if any English Given the dearth ofjournals, diaries, or letters left by soldiers, any source left by the foreign-born soldier officer is rare indeed.

The letters of Frank and Mary Clarke, edited by Darlis Miller and published as Above a Common Soldier, are such a rarity. Frank's letters to his wife and family give insight into an English immigrant's life-long association with the U.S Army as a noncommissioned officer, a civilian employee, and a Union volunteer officer His missives cover most of the major conflicts of xhe mid-nineteenth century, including the War with Mexico, the Indian Wars, the Mormon War, and the Civil War. Moreover, the letters help the reader understand the mundane existence of peacetime soldiering, the exhilaration of the war experience, and the lovehate relationship many soldiers had with the Army Unfortunately, there is little discussion of daily Army life, such as lodging, friendships and off-duty activities, or of the Army's effect on family life.

Nevertheless, for the social historian who examines frontier living conditions, the correspondence provides a great deal of information. It describes pioneering life in the Upper Mis- sissippi and Wisconsin, on the Great Plains, and in "Bleeding Kansas," Utah, and New Mexico. Students of Kansas history will be particularly delighted by the letters of Mary Clarke, which paint a vivid picture of the changes taking place in the territory as the frontier moved on and Kansas became a settled state.

Students of the frontier family and women's history will find the collection rich in detail about a family's struggle to carve out a home, educate their children, and eke out an existence during very distressing times Like many Army dependents, Mary was forced to "make do" without much aid from her soldier-husband. Indeed, the letters document Mary's growth from almost total financial and emotional dependence on her husband to her becoming "a resolute businesswoman dealing with tenants, lawyers, and government bureaucrats" (p xvi) After her husband's death in 1862, Mary continued writing to her mother-in-law over the next decade.

Darlis Miller has done a fine job editing the letters, writing good chapter introductions and annotations and producing a very useable index. I would have liked a few maps, however, to give context to the variety of places the Clarkes wrote about in their letters But the lack of maps does not detract from the general quality of the work I recommend it highly.

MARK R GRANDSTAFF Brigham Young University

American Forests: Nature, Culture, and Politics.

Edited by CHAR MILLER. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997. xiv + 289 pp. Cloth, $35.00; paper, $17.95.)

Char Miller, biographer of Gifford Pinchot and one of the foremost historians of the American conservation movement, edits this anthology of fourteen previously published essays tracing the evolution of the U.S Forest Service and of forestry in general Unlike many multi-author volumes, this one has broadly defined thematic unity It seeks to demonstrate that the relationship between conservationists, government officials, and the timber industry has been far more complex than is commonly believed.

It is impossible to do justice to each of the essays in a short review, and there is a bit of the unevenness that one would expect in an anthology. In general, however, the authors succeed in showing that the history of forestry and the American public has indeed been a "tangled interaction" (ix) Donald Pisani, for example, explains the differences between nineteenthcentury conservationists and their early twentieth-century successors as shaped by the latter's acceptance of corporate capitalism and the former's belief in tying moral degeneration to the disappearing forest. John F. Reiger argues that sportsmen played an under-appreciated role in the creation of the national forest system Articles by Richmond L Clow and Robert E Wolf highlight the role of profit-making in shaping the goals of the Forest Service and putting it at loggerheads with many conservationists, while Susan R. Schrepfer reveals the surprisingly cooperative relationship between the Service and the Sierra Club prior to the 1950s Hal K Rothman roots the rivalry between the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service in the 1920s and 1930s in the different constituencies to which they appealed, while Thomas G Alexander argues in his piece on the Great Basin that a lengthy time lag existed between the establishment of a bureaucratic, scientific management structure and the actual application of scientific principles toward land management. Essays by William G. Robbins and Nancy Langston demonstrate the impact of the modern forest industry on communities and the environment.

As a political historian, my only significant reservation about this book is its treatment of policymaking The book contains informative, often factladen essays on the passage of the Forest Reserve Act (1891), the Sustained Yield Act (1944), the Tongass Timber Act (1947), the National Wilderness Act (1964), and the National Forest Management Act (1976) And yet the roles of regions and political parties are not systematically explored. Did it matter, for example, that the Republicans (the more "activist" party in the nineteenth century) controlled the presidency and both branches of Congress for the first time in sixteen years when the Forest Reserve Act passed? Was Republican control of Congress significant to the evolution of the Tongass Act? What role did heavy Democratic congressional majorities play in the shaping of the Forest Management Act? If parties were not that important to national environmental policy development in the 1970s, for what reasons have they become more important in the 1990s? In what ways has the green movement in the West split the modern Democratic party constituency?

In raising these criticisms, I merely confirm what the book's contributors already know: While the historiography on conservationism and the ecosystem has experienced tremendous growth, much more remains to be done in explaining the evolution of national policy The authors here have made a good start.

LEX RENDA University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee