
Polly Aird
POLLY AIRD {[email protected]} is the author of Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector: A Scottish Immigrant in the American West, 1848–1861 (2009, University of Oklahoma Press), which won the best biography award from the Mormon History Association in 2010. She is the co-editor (with historians Will Bagley and Jeff Nichols) of Playing with Shadows: Voices of Dissent in the Mormon West (2011), which was named best documentary book by the Utah State Historical Society in 2012. Polly served on the editorial board of the Journal of Mormon History for ten years (2000–2011) and more recently on the executive board of the Mormon History Association (2011–2014).
Too Long Ignored | Ronald G. Watt, The Mormon Passage of George D. Watt: First British Convert, Scribe for Zion
Articles/Essays – Volume 43, No. 3
Although George Darling Watt (1812–81) is perhaps best known in the LDS Church as the first convert in the British Isles, he also recorded Brigham Young’s sermons in shorthand for more than sixteen years, preserving…
Read moreNot Just Buchanan’s Blunder | William P. MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, Part 1: A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858
Articles/Essays – Volume 44, No. 2
In this first volume of a planned two-volume documentary history of the Utah War, editor William P. MacKinnon has assembled a treasure house of previously unexploited documents to illuminate the decisions, actions, and bungling on…
Read moreReview: Full Lives but Not Fulfilling Paula Kelly Harline. The Polygamous Wives Writing Club: From the Diaries of Mormon Pioneer Women
Articles/Essays – Volume 48, No. 1