Book Notices

The Mormon Colonies in Mexico.

By Thomas Cottam Romney.(Salt Lake City:The University of Utah Press,2005.viii + 338 pp.Paper,$19.95.)

Until the publication of Lamont Tullis’ Mormons in Mexico in 1987, Thomas Romney’s The Mormon Colonies in Mexico, which first appeared in 1938, was the only published account of the Mor mon colonies in nor thern Mexico for the decades from the 1880s until the 1930s.The author moved to Mexico with his family in 1885 at the age of nine and remained there until his mid-thirties when political difficulties caused most Mormons to leave and return to the United States.This nar rative histor y provides an account of the first Mormons in Mexico,the acquisition of land and the establishment of the Mormon colonies in Chihuahua and Sonora,a moving first-hand account of the unrest and resulting exodus of Mormons in 1912,the return by some of the exiles and their struggle to reestablish the colonies,and concludes with a summary of conditions in the Mormon Mexican colonies in 1938.The republication of this long out of print history includes a new introduction by University of Utah Professor Martha Sonntag Bradley.

Polygamy in Lorenzo Snow's Brigham City: An Architectural Tour.

By Lowell C. Bennion,Alan L Morrell,and Thomas Carter.(Salt Lake City,University of Utah College of Architecture and Planning,2005.81 pp.Paper,$19.95.)

In 1853,Brigham Young directed the prominent LDS church member Lorenzo Snow to establish and create a settlement in northern Utah that came to be known as Brigham City.By the 1870s,Snow had fashioned a community that church leaders lauded as a model for the rest of Mormondom.It also became a settlement with a widespread practice of polygamy.Recently,the University of Utah College of Architecture and Planning explored the lives of early Brigham City settlers through the houses in which they lived.The results of their study examine the polygamist lifestyles of many original residents and include a thorough analysis of many prominent figures who practiced polygamy in Brigham City.

Silencing the Vicksburg Guns:The Story of the 7th Missouri Infantry Regiment As experienced by John Davis Evans Union Private and Mormon Pioneer.

By Jerry Evan Crouch.(Victoria,British Columbia:Trafford Publishing,2005. vii +184 pp.Paper,$19.95.)

During the years just before the beginning of the Civil War,John Davis Evans made two annual trips to Salt Lake City as a teamster for a Mormon supply wagon train.On June 1,1861,Evans joined the Union army for a threeyear stint as a private in Company D of the Seventh Missouri Volunteer Infantry Regiment and participated in a number of battles including the siege of Vicksburg,Mississippi.Following his parents’conversion to Mormonism in Wales in 1845,the family immigrated to America in 1850 and settled in the St.Louis area.After his discharge,Evans made his third and final journey to Utah and lived most of his life in the Sixteenth Ward,a Welsh enclave near the present Utah State Fairg rounds on Salt Lake City’s westside where he established the Evans Union Ice Cream Company—union denoting his proud Civil War service in the Union ar my.This account by a great-great grandson offers a detailed history of the Seventh Missouri Infantry Regiment during the Civil War.

Larger Than Life:New Mexico in the Twentieth Century

By Ferenc M.Szasz. (Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press,2006.xviii + 298 pp.Paper,$22.95.)

Ferenc M.Szasz takes a broad look at twentieth-century New Mexican history in this collection of ten essays.The book is divided into four sections:People,Cultures,Atomic New Mexico,and Mysteries.Szasz ties these sections threads together by emphasizing the importance of New Mexico as an almost spiritual “place,”which for him is tied to “belonging and often a ‘sense of being’”(xiv).With chapters on Robert Oppenheimer,the Los Alamos laboratory, nuclear testing,and Atomic photography,the bulk of the volume deals with New Mexico in the Atomic Age.

Mormonism and Evolution:The Authoritative LDS Statements

By William E. Evenson and Duane E.Jeffery.(Draper:Greg Kofford Books,2006.vi +123 pp. Paper,$15.95.)

Attempting to unravel the confusion regarding the official position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on evolution,William E. Evenson, an administrator and professor of physics at Utah Valley State College, and Duane Jeffery,a professor of integrative biology at Brigham Young University, have collected all known official statements made by the First Presidency and the President of the Church. The volume is annotated to provide historical context for each pronouncement.

National Parks and the Woman’s Voice:A History

By Polly Welts Kaufman. (Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press,2006.xxxviii +312 pp.Paper,$22.95.)

Updated a decade after its first publication, National Parks and the Woman’s Voice looks at the work done by women,both publicly and behind the scenes, on behalf of the nation’s national parks.Although Kaufman finds that the ratio of women park ranger s to men has not advanced significantly in the past ten year s,she also finds that women’s perspectives and values—for example,inclusiveness and an emphasis on relationships and networking—have changed the national parks dramatically.