The Politic of American Religious Identity by Kathleen Flake

There's an old joke about people who complain that 'the food was bad and the portions were too small.' That's about how I feel about this book.

One hundred and seventy-seven pages feels slim to me. I have to believe that with 3,500 pages of text from the Smoot hearings, there might have been a few more interesting things to say. She isn't however, a great storyteller; I didn't feel particularly engaged by the writing.

I also noticed several minors problems with this book:
(1) inconsistent use of 'god' and 'God' to describe deity.
(2) using 'L.D.S.' instead of 'LDS'
(3) two references to the Joseph Smith memorial monument as the Joseph F. Smith monument
(4) inconsistent capitalization of 'the first vision'
(5) numerous references (including one of the back cover) to the 'Howard B. Lee' library instead of Harold B. Lee.

This might strike you as nitpicking, but because I have no expertise in Church history, I feel like I need to trust the author. If she flubs on the little things that I know about, I don't think I can trust her guidance on the things I don't know about.

One area where I did quibble was on her facile interpretation that polygamy was replaced in the Mormon imagination with the First Vision. But when she mentions in passing that the First Vision was canonized in 1880, it hurts her thesis. Clearly, the First Vision did become an important identity marker at this time, but her causality leaves a little to be desired.

That said, this is an interesting and imporant episode in Church history. I've already spent a lot of time thinking about the unusual demise of polygamy and Joseph F. Smith's role in the hearings.