Book Reviews

"In His Own Language": Mormon Spanish-Speaking Congregations in the United States.

By Jessie L. Embry (Provo, Ut.: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Brigham Young University, 1997. x + 134 pp. Paper, $14.95.)

The "melting" of the United States' "ethnic melting pot," we were told forty years ago, was largely an accomplished fact, awaiting only a little more time and patience to be completed. Almost everyone could—would—be assimilated into that great American homogeneous pool But then time and patience were rudely disturbed with "Black Pride," "Brown Pride," "Red Pride," and "Roots." Time and patience were subsequently set on a fast backtrack with millions of additional immigrants—mostly Hispanics—who found the warmth and comfort of their own language, ancestral customs, and ethnic identities immensely preferable to the cold if not socially sterile hyperindividualism of America's dominant culture In the last thirty years, new "ethnic groups" have jumpe d out of the social woodwork Millions of people have looked for their roots, Active or real, in an effort to connect with a comforting reality they believe they must either preserve, discover, or create The issues are race, language, religion, national identity, culture, and the social psychology of "place."

In this cauldron of increasing U.S ethnic ferment, the LDS church has tried various proselytizing and pastoral strategies ranging from temporary ethnic accommodation, with assimilation as a goal, to a halting but perhaps increasing tendency to allow the church's membership to participate in language congregations in which they feel comfortable This, of course, results in additional administrative overhead on the central church, which is one reason why the idea has been so resisted over the years Still, the ethnic logic of our time is making its own demands. There is a reluctant but increasing attention being paid to it

Jessie Embry's book is a pleasing and immensely important contribution to our understanding of the LDS church's historical experience with its U.S Spanish-speaking members The author gives us a historical perspective on the church's ethnic missions in the United States and its undulating policy regarding "assimilation" and "accommodation." She reviews Hispanic members' perceptions about advantages and disadvantages of ethnic wards, explores their views regarding integrated wards and branches, and advances a modest but important policy proposal. She offers consequential background information and contemporary insights and does so in a concise way that I have not seen duplicated in other LDS-oriented literature.

Aside from archival research, Embry utilizes oral histories and interviews, particularly those conducted under the auspices of the Charles Redd Center's LDS Hispanic American Oral History Project She has taken rich advantage of direct and peripheral literature bearing on the subject

Embry recognizes the statistical nongeneralizability of her interviews but convincingly shows their insightful relevance for church policy and for the worshiping comfort of Hispanic members Hers is not an ideological treatise designed to trash Anglos and promote Hispanic ethnic pride It is a careful examination of the whirlpool of sentiments, some quite temporally unstable, that identify the "comfort zone" of a given people at a given time. Not all Hispanics are the same, not all have the same comfort zone, not all want ethnic wards, and not all even want to preserve their Spanish language. But for people whose zone of comfort and understanding is ancestrally tied to language, culture, and hero stories of another time and place, Embry convincingly shows that ethnic wards have their place Her examination of how those wards have functioned, how they have been treated, and whose interests they have served makes a wonderful read.

LAMOND TULLIS Spring City, Utah

The New Western History: The Territory Ahead.

Edited by Forrest G. Robinson. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997. vi + 218 pp. Cloth, $40.00; paper, $17.95.)

Since the advent of the "New Western History" in 1989 its major proponents, the sometimes-called "gang of four"—Patricia Nelson Limerick, William Cronon, Donald Worster, and Richard White—have produced several articles and books focusing upon conquest as an overarching theme. In their stories, capitalistic Anglo-males were the conquerors who, in the guise of national progress, exploited western lands and minority peoples. This new school and its attempt to distinguish itself from the so-called Old Western History has produced a spirited debate among scholars as to the merits of its root arguments.

With an announced task "to advance the lively and very important discussion that the New Western Historians have helped to set in motion"(10) seven scholars from diverse backgrounds (American Studies, English, History of Consciousness, Women's Studies, Natural Resource Management) proffer six essays that challenge key elements of the New Western History The seven scholars—Forrest G Robinson, Jerome Frisk, Krista Comer, Carl Gutierrez-Jones, Stephen Tatum, Sally K Fairfax, and Lynn Huntsinger— each agreed to carefully study a predetermined list of twenty-six New Western History "core texts" and then generate a critical response The result is this book, a provocative and at times hardhitting deconstruction of New Western History

Jerome Frisk leads out with a solid critique of fundamental beliefs espoused by the "gang of four." He convincingly contends that the New Western History is not new at all Much as Frederick Jackson Turner created a false barrier in 1893 when he announced the closing of the frontier, Frisk asserts that the New Western historians have begotten their own false barrier By claiming that the histories of the old school monolithically recount the triumph of civilization over wilderness with n o regard for race, class, gender, or the environment, Frisk believes that New Western Historians (Worster specifically) have created an "all but Gnostic bifurcation between the dark past and the enlightened present" (20) The anti-Turnerian air of ascendency that permeates the New Western History additionally shines in the face of post-modernist relativism

Other essays in this collection similarly contend that writers and historians, long before the contrived birth of the New Western History, told of defeat and the harsh realities of the American West. Frisk, Robinson, and Comer see Wallace Stegner as a prime example. His histories as well as his literary works anticipated the New Western History by several decades, telling complicated stories that often included disappointment as a western reality In addition, most of the essayists assert that the New Western History has largely ignored the literary West, and they argue for the inclusion of fiction, literature by women, and popular-culture media into the pool of sources that New Western historians should consider. As a whole the essays suggest needed correctives that, if made, could only serve to strengthen the future of New Western History

This is not to suggest, however, that this book is without flaws. The final essay by Fairfax and Huntsinger, two natural resource managers, seems a retreat from important advances made by other essays. While the two authors argue against western "exceptionalism," they "end feeling surprisingly closely allied with the New Western historians" (208) and accept unquestioningly what Frisk criticizes as a "Gnostic bifurcation" between the Old and New Western histories. Such inconsistency tends to undermine the strength of Frisk's argument and diminishes the impact of the collective critique Furthermore, the interdisciplinary nature of these criticisms offers insights likely overlooked by historians, yet many of the failings suggested by the essayists center upon lack of attention to evidence from their respective disciplines—which, considering the fact that New Western historians do practice history, is not a significant finding

Finally, I take exception to the promotional blurb on the book's back cover It suggests that these essays make the debate over the validity of the New Western History "accessible to anyone with an interest in the history of the West." Certainly, serious students of western history should read this collection for its valuable scrutiny of the core texts of the New Western History, but for the lay reader the jargon-laden prose and the theoretical diatribes of several essays make it much less than "accessible."

W PAUL REEVE Salt Lake City

Butch Cassidy: A Biography.

By RICHARD PATTERSON (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. xvi + 362 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

This book is an excellent assimilation of what appears to be the most reliable information about the life and exploits of Robert Leroy Parker, drawn from virtually all of the previously published accounts of him and his associates in the Wild Bunch A retired attorney, Richard Patterson generally succeeds in his aim to "piece together who he really was." He has attempted to present all of the known information on each aspect of Cassidy's life, weigh the contradicting facts, and suggest what he thinks is the most likely chain of events or course of action. The author concedes that we would all like to know mor e about "Butch Cassidy's" life, but it is actually quite amazing that so much information has turned u p about a figure who essentially strived to keep most of his actions secret There is certainly more known about him than anyone else of his type and time in the Intermountain West. The author has succeeded in presenting a good biography, readable for all interested audiences, of one of Utah's most famous—or infamous—sons.

One of the strongest aspects of the book is the extent to which Patterson has been over Cassidy's routes and visited the spots important in the various aspects of his life In many cases he offers excellent verbal descriptions of the geographic setting of such events. Another impressive aspect of the work is the author's use of his knowledge of the law and legal procedure to illuminate Cassidy's Wyoming trial, his relationship with lawyer Douglas Preston, and his incarceration. And the chapter on Butch's time in southern Arizona offers many good new insights His discussion of the origins and life of Etta Place is also particularly strong

On the other hand, as with almost all complex works, there are some questionable aspects. After describing Brown's Park as being on both sides of the Utah-Colorado line, south of the Wyoming border, Patterson places the transcontinental railroad as running south of the park In discussing the Parker family's attempt to get Butch's brother, Dan, pardoned from prison, the author mentions that they urged assistance from Utah senator Frank Cannon and Wyoming senator Joseph Rawlins In fact, Joseph L Rawlins was at the time Utah's delegate to Congress and later a United States senator from that state And toward the end of the book, where possible alternative theories and reports of where Cassidy ended his life are offered, one of these is a residence in the Pahrump Valley of southern Nevada Patterson also mentions the involvement of the Mormon church in mines there. In this there are mistakes concerning the time when the church was involved, actually 1895-96; the facts involving the gunfight, which did occur at the Chispa mine; and the numbe r of deaths in that incident, which was actually but one. (For more information on the Chispa mine, see an article co-authored by the reviewer and Leonard Arrington forthcoming in Nevada Historical Quarterly.) Incidentally, it is doubtful whether Butch could have found a place in the United States at the time that was more distant from law enforcement officers than the Pahrump Valley, if he was in fact there

Despite the excellent summary and discussion of what is presently known of Butch Cassidy, there are yet some aspects of his life for buffs and historians to continue pursuing There is at least one unsolved central Utah bank robbery during his heyday, though never linked to him More interesting are the suggestions of much more than simple fiction in the possible Salt Lake City love affair treated in Ardyth Kennedy's Good Morning Young Lady, not discussed in Patterson's book but dealt with some by Larry Pointer and Lula Betenson And perhaps most tantalizing of all are the bits of Mormon folklore that has Butch Cassidy riding in norther n Mexico with Francisco "Pancho" Villa. Supposedly, several former Utahns about to be shot by the revolutionaries were saved by a man they recognized as Cassidy who interceded in their behalf

Certainly the greatest unresolved mysteries relate to how the notorious outlaw's life actually came to an end There has been significant recent research on this, including DNA testing of huma n remains from Bolivian graves, as yet inconclusive but apparently not completed. Those involved obviously believe that Cassidy and Harry Longbaugh were killed in the San Vincente, Bolivia, shootout even though there are aspects—such as their staying in town instead of camping outside and using an easily recognized mule from an earlier robbery—which are far from characteristic of their usual modus operandi. Patterson does not necessarily share the assumption of Cassidy's death in South America, although he presents those views fairly. Besides the long-known assertions of Butch's sister, Lula, the present author marshals similar statements by a brother residing at Milford, Utah, and by the Bassett sisters from Brown's Hole, Wyoming, each of whom claimed visits with Cassidy well into the twentieth century Other convincing accounts of later sightings are also discussed

The search for the rest of Butch Cassidy's story will continue At one time, after Charles Kelly's The Outlaw Trail was published in 1959, it appeared that the story was as complete as it would ever be. But Patterson shows that Kelly had essentially ignored perplexing reports of a Washington man who went by the name of William Phillips. Later, Larry Pointer and others traced the details of that story, and when Pointer published In Search of Butch Cassidy in 1977, it appeared rather conclusive that the former outlaw eventually died in Spokane, Washington, in the late 1930s But thereafter, energetic students of Wild Bunch history raised serious doubts and concluded that Phillips was a wellinformed imposter More recently, Ann Meadows, assisted by her husband, Dan Buck, did extensive South American research on the possible deaths of Cassidy and Longbaugh there. Her book, Digging Up Butch and Sundance, has shifted more attention and perhaps opinion concerning their final demise. Thus the saga continues. The reviewer has a friend just back from Patagonia who noticed there great interest in Cassidy's former residence in the region For those who wish the most complete and readable summary of all that has thus far been written on Butch Cassidy, Richard Patterson's biography of him presently stands as that work.

E LEO LYMAN Victor Valley College Victorville, California

Old Heart of Nevada: Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of Elko County.

By SHAWN HALL (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998. xii + 308 pp. Paper, $21.95.)

If one were to happen into the history section of a local bookstore and notice on the spine of a book the title Old Heart of Nevada, one would probably think that here was a book detailing the history of central Nevada, possibly the towns of Eureka or Austin or the counties of Eureka and/o r Lander. After all, the word "heart" usually denotes the center of an object Then if one were to extract the book from the shelf he would note that the subtitle reads, Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of Elko County. Elko County! Since when was Elko County the heart of Nevada? This county, although one of the largest of the state's fifteen counties, is clear up in the northeast corner of Nevada

In actuality it must be agreed that the word "heart" doesn't necessarily mean the center of a body, whatever that corpus may be It could mean the locus of activity and the focus of attention of something more abstract.

Due to all the mining exploration, development, and production in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first two or three decades of this one, the northeast quadrant of Nevada probably had the greatest population and most business activity of the territory and state during that time. After all, the nickname "The Silver State"didn't come from all the silver dollars won and lost in Las Vegas. And the city of Elko, with its immediate environs and county, was indeed the heart of mining, business, and cultural Nevada.

This volume, then, is a snapshot history of the dozens of ghost towns in Elko County Surprisingly, counting numerous tiny mining camps and other hamlets that may not have housed more than fifteen to twenty-five residents, and which other ghost town writers may not include as full-fledged ghost towns, this one county alone boasts more ghost camps and towns than many other western states do.

Not surprisingly, the great majority of towns and sites described were involved with hard-rock mining, mostly silver, lead, zinc, gold, and copper. Both Nevada segments of the overland transcontinental railroads, the Central Pacific (later absorbed into the Southern Pacific) and the Western Pacific, were constructed through the county and left along their lines numerous stations and maintenance villages that have since gone by the wayside.

Far from producing a drab, mirthless tome, the author has researched enough to come u p with a variety of tidbits to liven up his descriptions. For example, concerning the town of Shatter: ".. in September 1953 Joe LaFrance was named postmaster, mostly because he was the only eligible resident." And, referring to the town of Tobar: "During the construction (of the Western Pacific Railroad), the owner of the Rag Saloon, which was housed in a canvas tent, put up a sign that said simply, T O BAR. The two words became one, and the new town had its name."

The book is divided into five regions: northwest, north-central, northeast, southwest, and southeast A map accompanies each region, locating the sites and road access to them. Each town is then discussed in alphabetical order rather than by geography as others have done. Brief directions to the sites are given from a still-existing settlement or landmark Some 115 photos have been used, approximately half from various historical repositories within the county or state; the remainder were taken by the author

Author Hall, originally hailing from the northeastern United States and graduating from Harvard University in 1983, became so involved with ghost towns in Nevada after working summers on a cattle ranch in Nye County that he moved to Elko and lived there for four years while doing his research This involved enough material over a total of eight years that he has already had books published concerning the ghost towns of Eureka, Lander, White Pine, and Nye counties.

Of the 308 pages, the last fifty are comprised of references to each site mentioned, an additional selected bibliography and one of the most extensive indexes ever seen in a book of this nature

If there were to be a serious concern of any kind about the book, it is in the relative sameness of many of the towns. After reading of about twenty sites, the reader finds that the towns had many of the same types of characters, murders were committed for the same reasons, and eventually the towns were abandone d for similar causes On e could change the name of a town and plug in new names and it would seem as if he had just read the same information a short time back. Of course, this is not the fault of the author or editor; it is simply the nature of the subject. Most mining and railroad towns began life the same way, exhibited a similar type of existence, and were inhabited by the same types of people

Although the book is not intended for everyone, those who are interested in ghost towns and mining and railroad history, particularly in Nevada, will find a volume of very interesting details that would unlikely be impossible to discover in any other single work

STEPHEN L CARR Holladay, Utah

Native American Identities: From Stereotype to Archetype in Art and Literature.

By SCOTT B VICKERS. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. xvi + 194 pp. Cloth, $40.00; paper, $19.95.)

The field of identity studies is rapidly becoming a scholarly thicket It is a dense entanglement of politics and emotion enmeshed in the context of a social history that dotes upon the powerless. In the case of Native American history, a spirited contest is underway to establish authentic and legitimate voices of authority.

In Native American Identities, Scott Vickers is intent on contributing to the destruction of older, "colonialist" constructions of Indianness. Making liberal use of the theories of Carl Jung and Roland Barthes, among others, Vickers attempts to isolate past trends in the manufacture of Indian images and thus begin the process of rendering them impotent. Of central concern to his study are the concepts of stereotype and archetype and their role in the creation of identity.

In the book's first section, entitled "The Language of Conquest," Vickers covers a lot of historical ground in order to establish the stereotyping of Indians In so doing, he rounds up the usual suspects: Mary Rowlandson on the godless savages of New England, Mark Twain on the Gosiutes, and Joh n Wayne on Indian-hating. He cites federal officials at length in order to indict federal policies for their genocidal designs

Vickers includes in this survey writers, thinkers, and artists who displayed greater sympathy for Indians but who nevertheless embraced damaging stereotypes. Helen Hunt Jackson and the philanthropists and artists drawn to Taos, for example, are depicted as romantics who furthered the image of the "Noble Savage." Unable to break free from the artificial renderings of Indians, they perpetuate the cultural, ethnic, and racial biases of the society in which they live

The study takes a more interesting and novel turn in Vickers' analysis of lesser-known purveyors of Indian images, particularly the painters William R. Leigh, Bert Geer Phillips, Joseph Sharp, and Walter Ufer. There exists a stimulating tension in these painters' work. Drawn to increasingly unromantic, empathetic views of their subjects, they nonetheless must address their own needs to make a living. The paintings that result invite the reader to contemplate the range of ways that a society oftentimes depicted simply as "white," and thus homogenous, has come to create views of the Native Americans in their midst. Similarly, the experiences and writings of Frank Waters, who lived for decades among his ethnological "subjects" in the Southwest, suggest a far more complex picture of how outsiders think about Indians as well as the limitations they encounter.

But the aim of Native American Identities, ultimately, is to replace colonialist constructions of the Indian "other" with the emerging voices of contemporary native artists and writers. Using archetype, a concept borrowed from Jun g and one that is more delicate and less clearly elucidated than that of stereotype, Vickers examines how Indianness springs from deep within the individual, from a realm untouched by, yet capable of combating, stereotype

The second section of the book examines a series of Indian artists as they wrestle with the fundamental issues of identity. Juane Quick-to-See Smith, Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds, and Diego Romero are three of those held up as offering fundamental challenges to the predominant stereotypes of Indian life At the heart of their inspiration, Vickers maintains, is anger. "If emotional content be the stuff of spirituality, as Jung has suggested, and the archetypes be symbols of emotion at the deepest level, and, further, if anger be such a primal emotion, then I think we can see [in the above-named artists' work] the emergence into consciousness, the articulation, of a central archetype of the modern, and historical, Indian: Anger with a capital A" (116) A similar anger fuels newer generations of writers, including Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon J Ortiz, and Sherman Alexie

One problem with this approach is the difficulty of reconciling the exterior constructions, or stereotypes, and the interior elements of identity, or archetypes These matters quickly devolve into rancorous political debate Legitimacy and authenticity are matters of intense struggle. Who is an authentic Indian artist? How does one prove one's Indianness? If such notions derive from within each individual, then the search for a legitimizing authority is inevitably futile This is not a problem that is Vickers' alone but rather one that haunts the field It is also one that is bound to provide fodder for future debate and discussion

The strength of Vickers' book is its examination of art, where pioneering efforts to articulate identity are taking place.

ERIK M Zissu University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh,

Adventures of a Church Historian.

By LEONARDJ. ARRINGTON. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998. viii + 249 pp. $29.95.)

As a boy of twelve, the late Leonard J Arrington wrote an eleven-page autobiography and histories of both sides of his family Thanks to what became a lifelong habit of keeping a diary, Arrington's memoir is a detailed, factual recollection of a career that made him, long before his death at eighty-one, the acknowledged genial dean of western historians. The solid evidence for this achievement may be taken in at a glance at Utah State University's Special Collections, which houses the Leonard and Harriet Arrington papers, awards fellowships, sponsors an annual Arrington Lecture, and, with the Arringtons present, last fall unveiled a fine portrait of the historian by artist William Whittaker. The portrait captures what someone has called his "avuncular, beneficent presence."

Davis Bitton has described the course of Arrington's career from his farm-boy beginnings in Idaho to his professional eminence as a series of short steps: from agriculture as a young Future Farmer of America to agricultural economics (his major at the University of Idaho); from agricultural economics to economics (his graduate studies at the University of North Carolina); from economics to economic history (his Ph.D. dissertation, which became the eventual classic Great Basin Kingdom); and finally, from economic history to history and biography. Economics has been called "the dismal science," but in Arrington's hands economic history has been the plow that broke new ground Arrington, who was present at the creation, so to speak, of what has been called the New Mormon History, was an insider unafraid to call a spade a spade—in his case a fact-finding spade that has excavated the ore of regional history in ever-widening topical circles like the expanding terraces at Kennecott's open-pit copper mine.

Arrington is generous in his credits to associates and assistants whom he trained and guided in research and writing projects—which, while he was official LDS Church Historian, was a massive undertaking reminiscent of the way H H Bancroft's histories were produced; and Arrington is unfailingly generous in recording even incidental hints and help from anyone who crossed paths with him long enough to stir and stimulate his ideas. He mentions, for instance, the invitation in March 1951 to speak to the Mormon Seminar (irreverently dubbed "The Swearing Elders"): "This request forced me to focus seriously on the meaning of all my research." In so doing, he found a theme for his dissertation: "the consistent application of [cooperative] antebellum policies in the Great Basin while the nation was adopting a more individualistic and freewheeling capitalism."

An equally significant passage in the memoir lies at the heart of Arrington's work as a faithful historian writing faithful history He calls it "a peak experience—one that sealed my devotion to Latter-day Saint history." Arrington felt transported, as when he listened to the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. "Whatever my talents and abilities an invisible higher power had now given me a commission." The experience remained "regardless of frustrations and obstacles that came to me in the years that followed." (We can thank Jan Shipps for urging Arrington to include this transcendent momen t in the memoir; in reading the manuscript for the publisher she noted its omission, having heard it in private before.)

An introductory autobiographical chapter acknowledges that his "remembered truth may not be the same as that of my associates and adversaries," but he is "trying to be both circumspect and honest." That's a cat's cradle of ambivalence readers will have to untangle for themselves as Arrington's lucid narrative describes the stages of his development: "How I Got into Mormon History"; "A Fraternity of Mormon Scholars"; and "The Founding of the LDS Church Historical Department," a halcyon period of freedom in using archival sources and in unfettered publishing that came to be known as Camelot

The counterbalance to that chapter comes later in "A New Pharaoh and New Directions," when Mormondom's "general authorities" demoted Arrington as official Church Historian, dismantled his operation, and sent him and several associates down to Brigham Young University to form the Smith Institute of Church History at a safe distance from original sources. The authorities rationalized that "the world" would have greater respect for work produced in an academic setting rather than as in-house history. Arrington gives a most detailed account of the meetings and the figures involved (he names names), but he absorbed the hurt, his testimony of Mormonism's latter-day work still unshaken

Fully half the volume describes the publications that Arrington, with or without collaboration, produced, beginning with early studies and moving, one or two works per chapter, through the publications of his later years, including The Mormon Experience (with Davis Bitton) and Brigham Young: American Moses. A penultimate chapter treats "The Ongoing Process of Writing Mormon and Western History," which is not the philosophical reflections we might expect from a Carl Becker or Wallace Stegner, but an account of the ceaseless round of public lectures and the incredible body of writing Arrington continued to engage in. One finished work awaiting publication is his "first full biography of a woman," a life of Madelyn Cannon Stewart Silver commissioned by the Silver family

In tone and temperament the memoir is a perfect mirror of Arrington's personality, his equanimity, and good cheer. David Bigler, in reviewing New Views of Mormon History, the Arrington festschrift edited by Davis Bitton and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, observed that "Truly one of Arrington's most remarkable accomplishments has been to gain an international reputation for scholarship among historians of all persuasions without ever becoming a polarizing influence or controversial figure himself." Except for his personal epiphany, the memoir records no lightning strikes exposing hidden corners of establishment history The light of commo n day falls on these non-presuming pages, pages rich in anecdote and meticulous in recalling person, place, and event

Photographs from early childhood and later life, of family and colleagues, of military, academic, church, and public service enhance the volume The dust jacket photo does not show the standard typewriter Arrington preferred over computers, but the typewriter does appear in an uncropped photograph within. Second wife Harriet Home put her husband's typed pages (and many scripts in his large, generous hand) on the computer, and not without some editing of her own.

Arrington belonged to an indispensable profession Milan Kundera has said that "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." We owe Arrington's memoir a great debt.

WILLIAM MULDER Emeritus Professor of English University of Utah

The Automobile Gold Rushes and Depression Era Mining.

By CHARLES WALLACE MILLER, JR (MOSCOW: University of Idaho Press, 1998. xii + 200 pp. $29.95.)

Mining in the American West continues to form a fascinating subject of historical inquiry That nineteenth and early twentieth century mining formed a significant theme in the development and industrialization of the West, and especially Utah, remains clear. Author Charles W. Miller, Jr., in this volume, probes the mining frontier and its relevance to an era beyond the boomtown days of the late nineteenth century For Miller, the underlying importance of mining, both in the late 1800s and in the 1930s, lay squarely on the sense of optimism that the search for precious metals provided the American psyche The lure of wealth based on gold and silver proved a tantalizing prospect in both periods. Miller labeled mining in the 1930s as the "automobile gold rushes."

Charles Miller begins his study with the traditional historiographical approach of citing the frontier school of thought espoused by Frederick Jackson Turner and then taking exceptions to parts of it. In his view, "the mining frontier remained active and significant long after 1890." Miller seeks to probe mining activity in the 1930s, a neglected and overlooked subject For him, the automobile gold rush became well-known in the western United States by mid-1932, and such activity took people out of the cities and food lines The author studies this phenomenon from the perspectives of amateur and professional involvement, constantly comparing earlier mining efforts with those of the 1930s. In the end, however, Miller returns to the ideas of Turner, stating that the 1930 automobile gold rush "manifests many aspects of Turner's views in terms of providing a true social 'safety valve.'"

The study traces the process and effects of the automobile gold rushes in various western states; it also discusses the United States gold and silver policies and large-scale mining and smelting activity. Utah receives some coverage, but California and Colorado remain the best-scrutinized Various key points emerge in the discussion: the increase in mining activity in California in 1931 was repeated in other locales, including American Fork and other Utah locations; people of all racial and national origins profited from the Colorado mines; and, unlike the rushes of the nineteenth century, "many women" participated in the automobile gold rush.

In 1934 those in the gold fields had more of "an immediate reason for optimism" than those in other sectors of the economy Miller states explicitly that "gold rushes, even in the 1930s, had and have a distinct psychological effect, including extreme optimism as well as independence and selfreliance." The majority of individuals and families who mined for gold "were not finding fortunes," but they were realizing incomes at a time when such were difficult to find In fact, Miller succinctly states that, "with mining prosperity, the Rocky Mountain region was one of the areas of the country least affected by the Depression. . . . " In a later chapter he notes that "some income was to be made in mining, and for those with developed skills in hardrock techniques, the returns were the best of any industrial occupation in the Depression."

In discussing the aftermath, Miller homes in on various western mining areas that made it big in the industrial metals. He mentions the Bingham Canyon area, where copper prices had collapsed at the beginning of the depression "The boost that higher silver prices gave to copper cannot be quantified, but all copper mining regions began to show signs of recovery [by 1934]." The shift from gold and silver to the industrial metals such as copper meant prosperity.

In this regard, Miller, digressing a bit from his main emphasis, mentions land and resource policies; ".. finding meaningful employment was a dominant public attitude during the era, and issues regarding environmental damage from the use of particular methods were not considered of primary importance." Such a perspective necessarily takes into account the issues within their place in time.

The Automobile Gold Rushes and Depression Era Mining offers an analysis of that rarely-studied time in the history of western mining The Utah reader will be disappointed though, since the author only occasionally mentions the state and areas such as Bingham, Park City, American Fork, and Moab For those who study mining history, however, the book is worth a careful read.

PHILIP E NOTARIANNI Utah State Historical Society