REVIEWS 175 into a potpourri of seeming afterthoughts. philosophy of education? Is BYU, as por- I would like to see the authors write a trayed by the authors, an accurate embodi- follow-up article synthesizing their views on ment of Mormon educational attitudes and the overarching philosophical questions philosophy? Are those attitudes and phi- raised in the book: What is the Mormon losophy evolving? And should they? BRIEF NOTICES Mormons & Gentiles: A History of persons who were not always in the lime- Salt Lake City by Thomas G. Alexander light made important contributions. Au- and James B. Allen (Boulder, Colorado: thors and subjects were chosen to give a Pruett Publishing Co., 1984), 360 pp. broad view of nineteenth-century Latter- day Saint experience. NOT SINCE The History of Salt Lake City Chapters include information on Ra- and Its Founders by Edward W. Tullidge, chel R. Grant, mother of Heber J. Grant; published in 1886, has a serious history of William Howells, the first LDS missionary Utah's capital city appeared. While many to France; Andrew Jenson, LDS historian; areas of Utah history have received exten- Martha Cragun Cox, a schoolteacher; Tru- sive study in recent years, Salt Lake City man O. Angell, architect of the Salt Lake has been mainly bypassed. Temple; Richard Ballantyne, who served BYU history professors Thomas G. a mission to India from 1849-1856; John Alexander and James B. Allen have at- Lyon, territorial librarian for sixteen years tempted to remedy this situation with their and a poet; Lucy Hannah White Flake, new book Mormons & Gentiles, part of a polygamous wife and early colonizer on the series in Western urban history. Arizona frontier; Elijah F. Sheets, who Chronologically, they trace the growth served as bishop for forty-eight years of the and development of the city, treating not Salt Lake Eighth Ward; Edward Hunter, only political, but also social, commercial, early Presiding Bishop of the LDS Church; and cultural history. Based on city council Emmeline B. Wells, editor of the Woman's minutes, newspaper accounts, oral histories, Exponent and early suffragist; Jacob Spori, etc., the authors often shed light on un- an early missionary to Switzerland and familiar aspects of the city's history. Par- educator; and Angus M. Cannon, who ticularly interesting are the chapters on the served as Salt Lake Stake president for twentieth-century city. twenty-eight years. The text is not annotated but each chapter contains a useful bibliography. The Book of Mormon: A Guide to Christian Living by Lowell L. Bennion Supporting Saints: Life Stones of (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985), vii, Nineteenth-Century Mormons edited with 130 pp., $8.95. an introduction by Donald Q. Cannon and BENNION, RETIRED DIRECTOR of the LDS David J. Whittaker (Provo, Utah: Reli- Institute of Religion at the University gious Studies Center, Brigham Young Uni- of Utah, feels that "the Book of Mormon versity, 1985), xvii, 412 pp., $12.95. is not a textbook in any science, not even a SUPPORTING SAINTS adds another needed historical account or a theological treatise, volume of information on the lives of early but a religious record of three migrations Utah Mormons. The volume has two pur- to the Western Hemisphere." He stresses poses : (1) to show the diverse lives of that the Book of Mormon should be read early Utah pioneers and (2) to show that for what it teaches about life. 176 DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT This book emphasizes that rather than sists on writing a letter to God and de- delving into mysteries — many of which manding an answer. will not be answered in this life — one But the fire is more than literal. Yarn should live basic, Christian principles. Dis- Taylor, who has made a career of shiftless- cussed are such subjects as responding ness, finds himself so touched by the inno- to suffering, serving others, withstanding cent grace of his new-born daughter that temptation, obtaining joy, humility, and he finds himself promising restitution — repentance. and meaning it — during the meeting where she is named and blessed. Wood- The Occult in America: New Histori- row Williams, possibly the man most gen- cal Perspectives edited by Howard Kerr uinely seeking spirituality, finds himself and Charles L. Crow (Urbana: University shooting Dan's dog. Gentle Jake Ellis, who of Illinois Press, 1983), 246 pp., $16.95. has always lived his life on the fringes, gives up a dream of joining the Church THE OCCULT IN AMERICA contains ten when a brief moment of shared passion chapters which examine a wide range with an Indian woman touches his life. of subjects including witchcraft in This book is for everyone who has inherited seventeenth-century Andover, occult reli- any feeling for small-town life. gion among eighteenth-century black slaves, nineteenth-century spiritualism, feminist perspectives on the occult, and "ultra- Today, Tomorrow & Four Weeks from terrestrial" UFO theories. Tuesday, by Carol Lynn Pearson (Salt The book includes a chapter entitled Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1983), 117 "The Occult Connection? Mormonism, pp., $5.95. Christian Science, and Spiritualism" by R. I N THIS IRRESISTIBLE coming-of-age story, Laurence Moore. According to the author, Carrie flees to a kibbutz in Israel, partly "The aim of this essay is to provide an because she has always wanted to and estimate of the appeal of occultism in partly because Ted "is a Utah insurance nineteenth-century America by examining salesman and I don't want to buy. I don't the permeation of magical and esoteric want to be signed, sealed, and delivered to ideas into three religions that were launched anybody. Marriage locks doors. Utah during the nineteenth century: Mormon- locks doors. I can breathe better out here. ism, Christian Science, and spiritualism." And I want to do something — heroic." So she learns Hebrew, plucks chickens, Circle of Fire by Herbert Harker (Salt fights a fire, picks oranges, thinks a lot Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1985), 229 about her Great-great-grandmother Sarah's pp., $9.95. handcart, comforts Hadassah when a girl- AWARDED THE Association for Mormon friend is killed in an accident with a gre- Letters 1985 prize for fiction, this novel nade, reaches out in love to an impover- paints a loving but unsparing portrait of ished Palestinian woman, and discovers the people in a little Canadian community when Jim approaches her that she doesn't called Lone Rock during the 1930s. There want sex — even with love — without mar- is something of an Our Town feeling to riage and when Joseph offers her both love the fascination of ordinary lives touched by and marriage that her roots are too firmly and remembering a great event. In this embedded in Utah to consider transplant- case, it is the fire that burned down Dan ing to Israel. Meanwhile, stodgy Ted is McHugh's house (and presumably his writing poetry and reading The Secret Life wife) coupled with Wally Doone's heroic of Plants. efforts to plunge into the structure, and his So what can she do when Ted shows subsequent institutionalization when he in- up on her twenty-first birthday with twenty- BRIEF NOTICES 177 one red roses and spreads out a picnic of THIS FAST-MOVING STORY takes Marc pita sandwiches and 7-Up in a field of Jeppson, a rather bored professor of Arabic sunflowers? who is coping with life as the widowed father of two delightful little boys, and Latter-day Science Fiction 2 edited by plunges him up to his neck in the high- Benjamin Urrutia (Ludlow, MA: Parables, tech, fast-moving, and morally ambiguous 1985), 188 p p . world of Alex Barclay, arms merchant, THIS IS THE SECOND COMPILATION by who expounds a persuasive power theory Urrutia for the LDS science fiction fan. he calls leverage. The book includes an introduction by Though Marc is LDS, the closest the Hugh Nibley entitled "Science Fiction and novel comes to dealing with a Mormon the Gospel" in which he states that "the setting is a Cub Scout pinewood derby. history of science itself is the foundation of Instead Marc shuttles between California, Science Fiction" and that "Science Fiction Colombia, Washington, and the Middle uniformly describes life in worlds in which East, providing smooth entry to Arab 'science' is king — meaning the scientist. princes. Drug deals, kidnappings, sophisti- In this kind of world is fulfilled the dream cated snooping devices, the FBI, the Israeli of the sophist, in which there is no room secret service, and a few hit men enliven for any but one kind of thinking. This is his trail. the one world of John Dewey, which he He also has a few choices of his own. carried to its logical conclusion." When an engineered heart attack forces The compilation contains approxi- the reins of Alex's empire into his hands, mately thirty short stories and several he has to decide whether to hold the deal poems. It includes: "Joseph Smith's Dia- together or blow the whistle on a would-be logue with the Devil," "Stoaway" by murderer. He also has to choose between Merle H. Graffam, "Heinlein and the being a success on Alex's terms or being a Latter-day Saints," "More Extraterrestrials" success as a father. And oh yes, he also has by Peter C. Nadig, "The Children of to choose between Jackie, Alex's high- Michael" by Scott S. Smith, "A Beautiful powered secretary, and lovely Valerie, the Day in the Neighborhood" by Jack Wey- young woman who cares for his sons. land, "The Conversion of Aurelian Mc- Despite the improbability that Alex Goggin" by Rudyard Kipling and "LDSF would have literally no organization beyond in Retrospect" by Scott S.