The appearance of Leonard J. Arrington’s Great Basin Kingdom in October 1958 was an important event in Mormon historiography. Reviewers hailed it as “one of the most important books ever produced about the Mormons and…
This talk is necessarily going to be “oral history.” As such it is suspect, as most oral history must be. Time plays tricks on our memories. It beclouds our judgment, confuses people, bends our interpretations,…
T. Edgar Lyon, a healthy and rugged man who had hardly known a sick day, died at age seventy-five after a short, losing battle with cancer. In his death, his wife, six sons, and thirty-two grandchildren lost a gentle, loving husband and father, and the Church a great historian and teacher.
T. Edgar Lyon, well known to a generation of students at the University of Utah Institute of Religion, died on September 20, 1978, at the age of 75. Born and reared in Salt Lake City,…
Earlier this year David Whittaker informed Dialogue that his long-awaited bibliography of Leonard Arrington’s works was ready—and that it would coincide with the 20th anniversary of Arrington’s trailblazing Great Basin Kingdom. We agreed that the winter…
Mira, the protagonist of Marilyn French’s best-selling novel, did not usually buy women’s magazines, but she pored over them at the dentist’s office: “Rate yourself: are you a good wife? Are you still attractive? Are…
Accounts of Emma Hale Smith and her relationship with her husband Joseph are scattered, sketchy and superficial. In 1973 Irwin E. Wirkus published Judge Me Dear Reader, a little twenty-five-page booklet about Emma. This past…
The study of early Utah history has been notably enriched by the recent publication of two contemporary accounts from the 1850s. The Journal of Martha Spence Hey wood, 1850 to 1856 includes Martha’s accounts of…
Most readers of Mormon fiction would quickly agree that the genre still awaits a writer of the stature of Chaim Potok or James Michener, to say nothing of a Joyce or a Faulkner. Perhaps one…
I guess you could say that I’ve been a guest in my father’s house but have confined myself to one room. At any rate, that’s how I felt after visiting Nauvoo for the dedication of…