Davis Bitton
Davis Bitton, professor of history at the University of Utah and co-author (with Leonard J. Arrington) of The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (1979).
Anti-Intellectualism in Mormon History
Articles/Essays – Volume 01, No. 3
Almost from its beginning Mormonism was disparaged as funda mentally superstitious and irrational, with an appeal only for the poor and uneducated. Even before the description of Joseph Smith as “ignorant” and “illiterate” by the…
Read moreMormon Lives | No Author Given, Melvin J. Ballard: Crusader for Righteousness, and Robert H. Malan, B.H. Roberts: A Biography
Articles/Essays – Volume 02, No. 4
Among Mormon leaders of the past generation few were as charismatic as Melvin J. Ballard and B. H. Roberts. Both, in different ways, were significant in the shaping of twentieth-century Mormonism. Both deserve solid biographies.…
Read moreB.H. Roberts as an Historian
Articles/Essays – Volume 03, No. 4
In 1930, when B. H. Roberts published his six-volume Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, learned journals were silent. But he himself, with pardonable pride, had described his work as “monumental.” One Mormon, answering Bernard De Voto’s contemptuous description of Utah as an intellectual desert, hailed Roberts as “another Gibbon.” Although hyperbolic, the favorable judgment was in general well deserved….
Read morePhrenology Among the Mormons
Articles/Essays – Volume 09, No. 1
On 2 July 1842 the Nauvoo Wasp contained a letter from A. Crane, M.S., professor of phrenology, alluding to the “large number of persons in different places” who wished to know “the phrenological development of…
Read moreIllustrated Periodical Images of Mormons, 1850-1860
Articles/Essays – Volume 10, No. 3
Image history—how the Mormons were viewed by others—has been a fruitful approach used by several historians during the past decade.
Read moreIn Memoriam: T. Edgar Lyon (1903-1978)
Articles/Essays – Volume 11, No. 4
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,…
Read morePolygamous Eyes: A Note on Mormon Physiognomy
Articles/Essays – Volume 12, No. 3
Ruth Benedict perceptively observed: “The first lesson of history . . . is that when any group in power wishes to persecute or expropriate another group, it uses as justification, reasons which are familiar and…
Read moreTen Years in Camelot: A Personal Memoir
Articles/Essays – Volume 16, No. 3
Between 1972 and 1982 I was part of the team of historians located in the Church Office Building under the direction of Leonard J. Arrington. It was a golden decade—a brief period of excitement and…
Read moreUniversalizing Mormonism: The Mexican Laboratory: Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture by F. Lamond Tullis
Articles/Essays – Volume 21, No. 3