Book Notices

Diary of Almon Harris Thompson: Explorations of the Colorado River of the West and ItsTributaries, 1871-1875.

Edited by Herbert E. Gregory. (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press and Utah State Historical Society, reprint edition 2009. 143 pp. Paper, $14.95.)

The Exploration of the Colorado River in 1869 and 1871-1872: Biographical Sketches and Original Documents of the First Powell Expedition of 1869 and the Second Powell Expedition of1871-1872. Edited by William Culp Darrah, Ralph V. Chamberlin, and Charles Kelly. (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press and Utah State Historical Society, reprint edition2009, 271 pp. Paper, $19.95.) The Exploration of the Colorado River and the High Plateaus of Utah by the Second Powell Expedition of 1871-1872. Edited by Herbert E. Gregory, William Culp Darrah, and Charles Kelly. (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press and Utah State Historical Society, reprint edition 2009. 540 pp. Paper, $24.95.)

These three volumes make available in print once again a treasure of important letters and diaries of the first and second expeditions by John Wesley Powell carried out in 1869 and 1871-72. Originally published in 1939, 1947, and 1949 as volumes 7, 15, 16, and 17 of the Utah Historical Quarterly these reprints are part of a long standing partnership between The University of Utah Press and the Utah State Historical Society. The three volumes include the journals of Almon Harris Thompson, George Y. Bradley, J. C. Sumner, John Wesley Powell, Stephen Vandiver Jones, John F. Steward, Walter Clement Powell, along with letters of Walter Henry Powell, John Wesley Powell, and O. G. Howland. Along with the journals and letters, biographical sketches, contemporary newspaper reports, and other documents make these volumes essential to anyone interested in the nineteenth-century Powell expeditions on the Green and Colorado Rivers and the high plateaus of Utah.

On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout, 1844-1889.

Edited by Juanita Brooks. (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press and Utah State Historical Society, reprint edition, 2009. xv + 769 pp. Paper, $39.95.)

In his preface to the 1964 edition, the late Everett L. Cooley wrote,“Of the Mormon diaries available to scholars, perhaps there is none which so adequately mirrors the times and locale of the writer and his people over such an extended period as does the diary of Hosea Stout” (vii).This paperback edition combines the original two volume cloth-bound edition into one volume. The diary begins in August 1844 three months after the murder of Joseph Smith while Stout was living in Nauvoo and includes frequent entries until July 1861 when Stout records the arrival of the transcontinental telegraph in Salt Lake City. Juanita Brooks spent more than two years as an employee of the Utah State Historical Society transcribing and preparing extensive notes for the original volume. Like the 1964 two-volume edition, this paperback reprint is a joint project of The University of Utah Press and the Utah State Historical Society.

We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus, 1846-1848.

By Richard E. Bennett. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009. xix + 442 pp. Paper, $21.95.)

Originally published in 1997 by Deseret Book as part of the sesquicentennial commemoration of the arrival of the first Mormon pioneers in Utah, this book chronicles the Mormon transition from the Midwest to the Rocky Mountains and is one of the most complete histories of the Mormon exodus to the Salt Lake Valley. Leonard J. Arrington wrote that it was “certain to become a classic in Mormon and American history” (xii). It has, and its importance is reflected in its republication by University of Oklahoma Press, a leading academic publisher of Western American history.

Across the Plains: Sarah Royce’s Western Narrative.

Edited by Jennifer Dawes Adkison. (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2009. viii +134 pp. Paper. $19.95.)

At the urging of Josiah Royce, son of Sarah Royce, Sarah provides a highly readable account of crossing the plains to California in a covered wagon with her husband and young daughter in 1849. Sarah Royce’s narrative was first published in 1932 and again in 1977. Jennifer Dawes Adkison in this new publication provides a twenty-eight page introduction in which she carefully analyzes Royce’s personal narrative. “Key to understanding Royce’s story,” Adkison writes, “is the idea that [Sarah’s] narrative is not strictly a representation of historical and personal events,” of this educated woman, it is also “a spiritual autobiography of a woman discovering the depth of her own faith”(7).

Ghosts of Glen Canyon: History Beneath Lake Powell.

By C. Gregory Crampton. (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2009. xv +150 pp. Paper, $29.95.)

C. Gregory Crampton, a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society, was a professor of history at the University of Utah where he taught for more than thirty years. Between 1957 and 1963 Crampton made thirteen trips to Glen Canyon to document the history and historic sites of the area before its inundation by the waters of Lake Powell. In this volume, originally published in 1986, Crampton offers a brief introduction to the history of the canyon followed by accounts of fifty-four locations along the Colorado River from Lee’s Ferry on the south to Hite, the Dirty Devil River, and Cataract Canyon on the north. Twelve sites on the San Juan River between its confluence with the Colorado River and Clay Hills Crossing are also included. The book is nicely illustrated with black-and-white photos, many of which were taken by the author. W.L.”Bud” Rusho collaborated on the book penning an introduction and providing photographs including several in stunning color. Edward Abbey provides a brief, but passionate foreword calling for the restoration of Glen Canyon to its pre-dam state.

San Juan Legacy: Life in the Mining Camps.

By Duane A. Smith.(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009. xvi + 163 pp. Paper, $24.95.)

Preeminent Colorado mining historian, Duane A. Smith has written a brief history of life in the mining towns of Ouray, Silverton, Telluride, LaPlata, Lake City, Creede, Ophir, and a dozen other mining camps that were born from 1860 to 1914 during the heyday of silver mining in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. This is a popular social history that covers many subjects including, saloons, prostitutes, baseball, churches, schools, fraternal organizations, cultural activities, newspapers, health care, disease, and death, among others.With chapter titles that include “Shall We Gather at the River or Shall We Go Straight to Hell,” “Love Can’t Live on Heavy Bread,” and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” Smith engages the reader most effectively.The text is illustrated by an ample collection of photographs by John L. Minnemann.

The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine.

By Gary Topping. (Salt Lake City: Sagebrush Press, 2009. xvii + 109 pp. Paper, $16.95.)

In commemoration of the centennial anniversary of the completion of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in 1909, historian and archivist of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, Gary Topping has written and published a brief but informative history of a Salt Lake City landmark. This effort is both a revision and update of an earlier work by Bernice Maher Mooney, The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine, which appeared in 1981. In five chapters Topping provides a brief overview of the history of Catholicism in Utah and traces the story of the Cathedral from its conception and design, construction, and subsequent restoration during the 1970s and renovation in the early 1990s. A treasure of black-and-white photographs illustrates the history and a color photo essay by Ann Torrence provides a magnificent and moving portrait of the interaction of people with the beloved cathedral.

Logan Reflections: Photographs Then, Now and In Between.

By Darrin Smith.(Logan: Herff Jones Yearbooks, 2009. 192 pp. Cloth, $28.00.)

Logan native Darrin Smith has produced an intriguing look at Logan and its nearby canyon through then and now photographs accompanied by informative captions in this handsome coffee-table style volume. The first and last of the ten chapters are collections of the author’s favorite photographs. The other eight groupings include landmarks, Main Street, Utah State University, cityscapes, Logan Canyon, churches, trains and trolleys, and buildings that are no longer standing.