A Rascal by Nature, A Christian by Yearning: A Mormon Autobiography by Levi Peterson

Peterson writes: “I don’t recall weighing whether ther might be an audience for my life’s story. I simply wanted to write it.” And thus the problem: there are strands of interesting material here for several different books (a generic autobiography, a psychobiography, an intellectual biography, a writer’s history, a wilderness journal) that aren’t integrated. Readers interested in the background to his fiction will be at least as irritated by irrelevant material as they are thrilled by his lengthy reflections on his work, while readers looking for insights into his “vexed and vexing relationship with Mormonism” may tear their hair out over passages like this one:

I felt sharply the deep duplicity of my life–my possession of distinctly different personas in conservative and liberal environments, and wondered again how I could bridge the two worlds without being insane, and feeling again it is precisely because I do bridge them that I’m not insane.

And then, after nothing more than a paragraph break, this:

In May 1994 I bought a new electric-blue Ford Ranger pickup with a sluggish four-cylinder engine and a five-speed conventional transmission. As it turned out, I would own this vehicle for ten years to the day. The vinyl cover on the bench seat cracked early . . .

I doubt that I’m the only reader who wishes that the statement about conflicting personas had gotten a little more development even at the cost of slighting the next segment of Peterson’s automotive history. His curious relationship with the institutional church (he was devastated at the thought of excommunication but likes coffee “mostly because it is a convenient sin. It is a very handy, inexpensive way to stay out of harmony with your church.”) is something that I kept patiently waiting for him to explore in some detail, but he never did. He does make several snide-sounding comments about the Church. On the sacrament prayers: “Apparently, God will not sanctify the tokens of redemption unless you get the words just right.” On eternity with his non-LDS wife: “God will not be so petty and mean-spirited as to deny those who have loved each other in mortality to continue their love in immortality. It is love that sanctifies and seals a relationship, not a ritual conducted before an altar made by human beings.” While these sentiments deserve comment on quite a few levels, I’ll restrict myself to the irony: for someone who sees himself as a ‘loyal dissenter’ ministering to the marginalia of Mormonism, he must realize how grossly unsatisfactory two sentences are for dismissing the capstone of Mormon theology. Some readers will also be put off by the depth of his exploration of his sexual history, although he does offer an interesting apologia for this near the end of the book. Nonetheless, Peterson is a fabulous storyteller who made me actually care about his mother’s tumultuous first marriage and his ancestral connection to Mormon history. For the reader who can tolerate unexplored caves (”a fierce, proud grief lies at the core of the Mormon identity, cemented there by the hardships, smothered aspirations, and truncated lives of our pioneer ancestors”), this will be an interesting book. But for those who want more fleshing out, this will be a frustrating read.

An Advocate for Women: The Public Life of Emmeline B. Wells by Carol Cornwall Madsen

I’ve written before on the need for more biographies of LDS women, so I was predisposed to like this book. But I couldn’t even finish it; I admit, guiltily. The main problem was this: Cornwall Madsen’s approach is to bifurcate the “public” and “private” lives of Wells. (One gets the impression that another biography–covering her private life–is forthcoming.) But as every feminist knows, the personal is political: how could it not be when the main issue of the protagonist’s life is polygamy? Without the backdrop of Well’s private life, I couldn’t peg the events in her public life. Cornwall Madsen seems to inadvertently make the case for combining Wells’ stories when she writes:

As for her contributions to the Exponent, the decade of the 1870s that brought her periods of disillusionment and unhappiness also produced some of her sharpest feminist critiques and opened a broad new avenue of experience for her. The private despair of her middle years gave way to heightened pleasures in her public life. Out of the depths of her own private battles, she created the feminist manifesto that initiated a lifelong commitment to the advancement of women.

With statements like these, it seems hard to rationalize the separation of Wells’ public and private personas. And I don’t wish to be overly critical, but a second major problem was that the prose just didn’t hold my attention. Because I have read everything that I’ve ever written, I have a pretty strong stomach for colorless writing, but I still found this book dull. I’m not sure why Cornwall Madsen uses such odd phraseology as “the woman movement” or “woman suffrage” instead of the more common and felicitous alternatives, but they don’t help the lackluster prose. I don’t need my historians to be wordsmiths, but I need more than this to hold my attention.

Wells’ story is important; her defense of polygamy provides an interesting warp to the weft of modern feminism: “polygamy advanced woman’s status by making her less subordinate and more independent than monogamy, with more opportunity for personal development and a share in the world’s work.” Unfortunately, this volume doesn’t do justice to Well’s legacy.

Contemporary Mormonism: Latter-day Saints in Modern America by Claudia Bushman

I believe this book is meant to be read in an Intro to American Religions class or used for research at the undergraduate level. Bushman has done an admirable job by eschewing the dry prose that one expects from a ‘textbook’ in favor of a storyteller’s approach. This doesn’t mean her approach is flawless, however. Bushman makes several statements that might be good debate material for Mormon intellectuals, but don’t stand on their own as unsubstantianted, unnuanced statements in a work intended for nonspecialists. For example, she constrasts “the basic split between the mystical religion of magic and folklore” with “the rational world of college-educated members.” Similarly, she notes that “speakers in local wards have great freedom, [while] those who speak or write to wider audiences are carefully scrutinized.” (I wouldn’t claim that either statement is necessarily false,but rather that they are a lot more complicated than that.) I also question her choice of material: Do Orrin Hatch’s mezuzah and David Brian Mitchell really belong at the beginning of a chapter on the church’s basic beliefs?

More serious than her own choices, however, are those made by her editor and publisher. I think they let her down. Here’s the first quote from the back cover:

“A welcome alternative to the Mormon blogs that only praise or only condemn this fascinating church, Contemporary Mormonism is friendly, objective, probing and very, very informative. Claudia Bushman has done us all a great service.” –Carol Lynn Pearson

Well, since you are reading a Mormon blog, you know how jaw-droppingly incorrect that statement is, so I won’t belabour the point. Unfortunately, several similar slips mar the text. The book is obviously written for nonmembers, but terms including correlation and family home evening are mentioned but not defined. Page 4 features a restatement of statistics that had already been mentioned in the text. Perhaps most surprising was the frequency with which typographical errors appeared in the few chapters that I read.

There is a real need for works sympathetic to the Church to be available to students of all ages, but this text is problematic on several fronts. A better alternative is The Latter-day Saint Experience in America.

Paul's Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary by Ben Witherington

Well, I didn't hate this one as much as the other two, but I still couldn't finish it. I don't think the problem was Witherington; I think it was Paul. I don't like the epistles.

Mormonism in Transition by Thomas Alexander

This book alternated between fascinating and dry as dust. A worthwhile if not page-turning read.

Romans by Thomas Schreiner

I made it through Romans five of Schreiner's and Moos' commentaries on Romans (that's about 600 pages!) and then I had to quit. I had looked forward to working through these books so much and for so long, but it was awful. I hated both of these. They barely engaged the text but rather theologized on the implications of what Paul was saying. ugh.

The Epistle to the Romans by Douglas Moo

See above. ugh

Leviticus as Literature by Mary Douglas

I got this largely because Douglas' Purity and Danger caused a not-so-quiet revolution in the understanding of the purity laws. But despite a few interesting insights, I found this hard to wade through, maybe because she is an anthropologist and I wanted her to write like a biblical studies person. Uneven, but interesting.

Leviticus by Jacob Milgrom

I seriously considered buying his three-volume Anchor Bible Commentary since it is the definitive work on Leviticus, but wasn't sure I could stomach the 2500 pages--or the price. I was thrilled when I found this title at Amazon billed as a distillation of the key insights from the Anchor series. But it was a disappointment. He wastes time on all sorts of borderline-irrelevant topics (Alchoholics Anonymous, an entire page of statistics on modern slavery, etc.) and generally didn't provide much bang for the buck. The NICOT was much better.

Leviticus (NICOT) by Gordon Wenham

This was the best of the lot and if I could only have read one title on Leviticus, it would have been this one. I discovered the NICOT/NICNT series with the Ezekiel title which I thought was fabulous (although I read part of the Acts title online and thought it was too fluffy). The main strength of this title was that it presented solid exegesis (taking both Milgrom and Douglas into account) and then, separately, covered the relationship between Leviticus and the New Testament. If you wanted to read one volume on Leviticus, it would be this one.

Holiness to the Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus by Allen Ross

I normally shy away from commentaries for expositors but I felt that it might be worthwhile to bend that rule a little for Leviticus. This was pretty good but not essential.

What to Eat by Marion Nestle

I found this mildly entertaining; there isn't much new here if you are familiar with basic nutrition principles and issues. (However, this would be an excellent book for someone who wasn't familiar with those things.)

The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary by Ben Witherington

It was fun to work through Acts with this book and Fitzmyer's. They were a good balance: Fitzmyer solid and predictable, Witherington with an eye toward feminist and literary concerns. If you think you can stomach 1600 pages of commentary on Acts, working through the text passage by passage as you read these two books is a great exercise.

The Acts of the Apostles by Joseph Fitzmyer

This was a solid commentary on Acts. There were several annoying formatting issues (I think that 'notes' belong before 'comments' and that an entire paragraph of citations--plunked in the middle of the commentary--is irritating.)

Summer Sisters by Judy Blume

I read this on the beach. It was completely vapid.

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand

This was a wonderful book--it is a real mark of a good author to make an uninteresting (to me, anyway) topic fascinating. Recommended.

Material World by Peter Menzel

This was fabulous--I enjoyed it as much as Hungry Planet, its sister book. The premise is simple if bizarre: families were found who represented the average income in their country. All their posessions were lugged into the yard and photographed. Wow. Highly recommended.

Blue Blood by Edward Conlon

A flawless cover (don't tell me you don't judge a book by its . . .), a rocking first chapter, and then . . . pffffft. I couldn't get through it. Reject.

The Art of Biblical Poetry by Robert Alter

To be fair, I only skimmed this after my disappointment with Alter's other book. But my reaction was, as I had feared, the same: for whatever reason, this book was a disappointment.

The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter

It may be that a book this hyped could never live up to that hype; it may be that a book revolutionary when it was written a generation ago succeeded in making itself appear commonplace today; it may be that I was already familiar with the basic material; it may be that I am too uptight to handle jumping from passage to passage. In any case, I found this rather disappointing.

Curry: A Tale of Cooks & Conquerors by Lizzie Collingham

Fascinating topic; poorly executed book. I could barely make it through the first chapter. Reject.

The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown

I thoroughly enjoyed this--it is a fine specimen of the mystery/thriller/beachread genre. Needless to say, I thought the historical reconstruction of early Christianity left a little to be desired (what's the point of humanizing Jesus if you are going to marry him off to a goddess?), but it made for a fun book. I find it ironic that there are at least a half dozen 'The Truth about the DaVinci Code' type books, but no one who thinks that The DaVinci Code is truth. While the characterization left a little to be desired, there wasn't that much of it to wade through. This book has a great plot and it was a fun read.

Safe Journey: An African Adventure by Glenn L. Pace

If you read the blogs, you hear about the condition of the Church in South America, Asia, etc. all the time. Why? Because there are so many American RMs who served in those countries. But it seems that almost all missionaries in Africa are Africans, so we don't hear much about the tortured history of the Church in Ghana or the fact that African men are substantially more likely to join the Church than African women. Which means that this portrait of Africa written by a GA fills an important niche, and can be easily forgiven for its sometimes pedestrian writing.

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

In this wonderful book, Pollan traces the food chain through four meals: McDonald's, Whole Foods, a home-cooked one from a sustainable farm, and one that he hunted-and-gathered. You will perhaps not be surprised that McDonald's doesn't fare well (although his analysis of its failings is much better than the usual screed), but what was truly amazing was his smackdown of Whole Foods, which he finds to be not much better than McD's despite its pretentions and price tag. The lengthy description of the sustainable farm was enough to convince me to get to the farmers' market this week (I'm not kidding), and the gathering of mushrooms was interesting enough to compensate for the overly philosophical ruminations on hunting. Highly recommended.

Children of God by Mary Doria Russell

Ack. This was so depressing. The prequel to the book is one of the finest works I have ever read, but this is just a trainwreck. I couldn't keep the characters straight, let alone care about them. She had to pull about a half dozen rabbits out of her hat to keep the plot moving along and by the time she got around to resolving all of the plotlines and redeeming all of the characters, I was so irritated I didn't care.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

This is one of the half dozen or so best novels that I have ever read. The plot sounds stupid (Jesuits make first contact with aliens), but the characterization is superb and the book manages to explore the Big Issues without becoming ponderous or cheesy. Highly recommended.

Prayer (compilation)

There were a few gems in here, but overall this book didn't do much for me.

I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb

I just couldn't get into this. The protagonist didn't gel as a character.

Pedestals & Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority, and Equal Rights by Martha Sonntag Bradley

By attempting to be history and polemic, this work fails as both. It is inadequate as a polemic (namely, making the case--contra the Church's position--for the ERA) because a chronological narrative is no way to argue a position. And it fails as history because the polemical aspects make it impossible to trust the author. While virtually every page contains examples of the bias-in-sheep's-clothing, perhaps a few examples will suffice:

(1) Rhetorical sledgehammers. Sonntag Bradley describes the church's position as creating women who are financially dependent on their husbands.While technically true, her words certainly create a different impression than if she had quoted the language from the Doctrine and Covenants that women have claim upon their husbands. As one isolated example, I would dismiss this, but this kind of rhetorical trick exists on virtually every page of this book. She casts the Church and its doctrines in the worst possible light.

(2) Unsupported conclusions. By way of summation of the Sonia Johnson affair, the author states that no one really believes that her excommunication wasn't because of her support for the ERA. This is a hard position to maintain when this book provides the following data points: (a) Mormons for ERA had hundreds if not thousands of members, none of which were excommunicated, (b) the letter that Johnsons' bishop sent her announcing the decision to excommunicate began with the charge that she had publicly stated that nonmembers should not allow the missionaries into her home because of the church's opposition to the ERA, and (c) the quoted letter from a GA to an ERA supporter assuring her that her membership in the Church was not in jeopardy.

(3) Inaccurate quotations. As part of the Sonia Johnson story, the author quotes an unnamed church spokesman as stating that one is either on God's side or Satan's side. This did not strike me as the kind of language that a church spokesman usually uses, so I checked the footnote. It was to Sonia Johnson's From Housewife to Heretic, which I have, so I checked it. We can leave aside, for a moment, the questionable source itself (as Johnson is hardly a disinterested observer). The statement in Johnson's book (which is also attributed to an unnamed church spokesman) does not purport to be his (or her?) exact words, but is clearly Johnson's summary of his position. Yet Sonntag Bradley quotes it as if it were the words of the spokesman. When you only check one footnote in a book and it is as mangled as this one, it is difficult to have much confidence in the rest of the book.

I really wanted to read a good history of the Church's opposition to the ERA. It is a fascinating episode in Church history, all the more so given the current situation regarding same-sex marriage. I was seriously disappointed in this work.

Rose Marie Reid: An Extraordinary Life by Carole Reid Burr

This book was simply amazing; if it were fiction, it never would have been published because the story is completely implausible. Her life genuinely was extraordinary, and this book is a must-read for those interested in LDS women.

Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt

OK, I didn't actually read this--I listened to it over the course of several weeks with my husband. I'm usually incapable of focusing on audio books, but this book was light enough and fun enough that it held my attention. I enjoyed it; I always enjoy a contrarian. At the same time, I doubt that many of his scenarios and theories would hold up under close scrunity . . . but it was still fun to listen to.

Mormon Lives: A Year in the Elkton Ward by Susan Taber

Wow--what a fabulous book. In the 1980s, the Elkton Ward participating in a special project where extensive records--including interviews with every ward member who was willing--were made. This book is a compilation of those interviews. The diversity represented in this book is amazing. I expected it to feel dates (these interviews were, after all, conducted a generation ago), but virtually every line in here could have been spoken yesterday. Highly, highly recommended.

Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff by Thomas G. Alexander

Perhaps after last year's amazing biographies of Joseph Smith, David O. McKay, and Spencer W. Kimball, the bar has been set a little too high. All the same, this book had a definite Eat Your Vegetables feel to it; I trudged through but I didn't much like it.

Who Stole Feminism? by Christina Hoff Sommers

One way of teaching the writing and editing process is called The Mad Hatter. The student is told that the writer wears four different hats: the mad (wo)man, the architect, the builder, and the janitor. The problem with this book is that Sommers never made it past the first hat. There is great raw material here (including evidence to rebunk virtually everything you heard in the mainstream media about the status of women and girls in the last decade) but Sommers zings from topic to topic without context, transition, summation, or, you know, actually developing a thesis. Which is a real shame because the ideas in this book are important.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

This book was tremendous--one of the best novels that I have ever read. Perhaps I should have been rolling my eyes at all of the coincidences that were necessary to move the plot along, but for some reason I didn't. The story hung together nicely and just seemed right. Highly recommended.

Raising America by Ann Hulbert

I'd been looking forward to reading this book for months; unfortunately, it was boring beyond belief. I gave up after just a few pages.

The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin

I need a neologism: it would describe the genre where one incident is used as a window to open a variety of topics. In this case, a blizzard in 1888 that killed hundreds of schoolchildren (the weather shifted abruptly in the middle of a school day, forcing children to walk home in light clothing) is used as the point of departure for an exploration of immigration to the Great Plains, meteorology, and the physical effects of freezing weather. All of these are interesting; Laskin's only misstep is spending too much bandwidth on century-old political infighting among government weather forcasters. But on balance, this was a very interesting--if heartbreaking--book.

Parasite Rex

You know, the ick factor on this book wasn't nearly as high as I had expected, yet it was full of fascinating tidbits about parasites. Highly recommended.

Thinning the Herd

So I'm not sure what precisely happened, but in a moment last night, I went from a person who wouldn't think of parting with a book that I had read to someone who wanted nothing more than a drastic purging of any and every book that didn't justify its inch of shelf space. The picture is of all the books that are outta here. Here's a list of titles on their way out the door; some I've blogged on and some I haven't:

Can You Trust a Tomato in January?

Spoiled: Why Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do about It

Why Does Popcorn Pop?

Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture

Secret Formula

Fat of the Land

Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table

Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America

Consumed: Why Americans Love, Hate, and Fear Food

How to Read a French Fry and Other Stories of Intriguing Kitchen Science

The Tummy Trilogy: American Fried, Alice, Let's Eat, and Third Helpings

Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market

Pot on the Fire: Further Exploits of a Renegade Cook

The Last Days of Haute Cuisine: America's Culinary Revolution

The Clustered World: How We Live, What We Buy, and What It all Means about Who We are

Beard on Food

365 Good Reasons to Be a Vegetarian

Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash

Consuming Culture: Why You Eat What You Eat

Much Depends on Dinner

We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies, and Fat

The Best Thing I Ever Tasted: The Secret of Food

The Greatest Generation

True Women

Kennedy

'Tis

Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America

Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia

A History of Reading

The Book on the Bookshelf

A Place for Us: Eleni's Children in America

Cane River

Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood

Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

Rethinking Schools: An Agenda for Change

Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence

Punished by Rewards

The Trouble with Perfect

New Mother's Guide to Breastfeeding

Minding the Children: Child Care in America from Colonial Times to the Present

Battleground: One Mother's Crusade, The Religious Right, and the Struggle for Our Schools

Childwise

The Shelter of Each Other

Saving Childhood: Protecting our Children from the National Assault on Innocence

Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds--and What We Can Do about It

The Closing of the American Mind

Marriage and Family in a Changing Society

There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America

Child Development

The Vocation of a Teacher

The Troubled Crusade: American Education 1945-1980

Killing the Spirit: Higher Education in America

The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America's Changing Families

Learning Activities for the Young Preschool Child

The Path Between the Seas

The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

A Renaissance Tapestry: The Gonzaga of Mantua

The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonement of Children in Western Europe

Prodigal Summer

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Not All of Us Are Saints: A Doctor's Journey with the Poor

The African Experience

Lost Worlds: How Our European Ancestors Coped with Everyday Life and Why Life Is So Hard Today

A Geography of Time: The Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist

Levitating Trains and Kamikaze Genes

Living Out Loud

A Not Entirely Beniegn Procedure: Four Years As a Medical Student

Good Wives: Image and Reality iin the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750

Wide Awake at 3:00am: By Choice or By Chance?

The Concise Dictionary of English Etymology

A Map of the World

The Lexus and the Olive Tree

365 TV-Free Activities You Can Do With Your Child

365 Outdoor Activities You Can Do With Your Child

The Twentieth Century: The History of the World: 1901 to 2000

A Civil Action

A Woman in Residence: A Doctor's Personal and Professional Battle Against An Insensitive Medical System

Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

Rubbish: The Archaeology of Garbage

September

The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

Memoirs of a Geisha

Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media

Purity of the Heart Is to Will One Thing

How Does Aspirin Find a Headache?

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

The Pilot's Wife

Manufacturing Victims

Villages

The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way

Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era

A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character

Human Natures: Genes; Cultures, and the Human Prospect

In Love with Norma Loquendi

The Girl from Botany Bay

Christmas Portraits

The Bible Code

When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purplse

An Introduction to Language

Low Fat Cooking

Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul

Reality Isn't What It Used to Be

A Distant Mirror

Grammatical Man

Keeping Faith

The Millionare Next Door

The Professor and the Madman

The Girl with the Pearl Earring

Hidden History: Exploring Our Secret Past

The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

The Heath Anthology of American Literature

The Seven Storey Mountain

The View from a Monestary

The Inquisition: Hammer of Heresy

Why God Became Man and The Virgin Conception and Original Sin

The Birth of Christianity: Reality and Myth

The Cloister Walk

Christology in Dialogue

The Gospel of Mark

A World Full of Gods: The Strange Triumph of Christianity

The Way of Jesus Christ

Jesus, the Crucified People

Catch-22

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes

Les Miserables

King Lear

Plagues and People

The Color Purple

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe

A Woman's Journey to God

The Bad Popes

Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship

Why Christianity Must Change or Die

Dictionary of Saints

Christology at the Crossroads

Meditations on the Apocalype

The Letter to the Hebrews

Crossing the Threshhold of Hope

Everyday Life in Ancient Times

The Holocaust

A Breath of Life: Feminism in the American Jewish Community

Jewish Memories

Tradition in A Rootless World: Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism

The Folk of the Fringe

Gandhi: An Autobiography

Medieval Women's Visionary Literature

Communion: Contemporary Writers Reveal the Bible in Their Lives

In Whose Image? God and Gender

A Time to Weep, A Time to Sing: Faith Journies of Women Scholars of Religion

The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture

Sisters: Lives of Devotion and Defiance

The Feminine Face of God: The Unfolding of the Sacred in Women

Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation

It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It

All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

World Religions from Ancient History to the Present

Sandcastles: The Arabs In Search of the Modern World

Hadj: An American's Pilgrimage to Mecca

The Multiple Identities of the Middle East

Maybe (Maybe Not)

From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Lives

The Second Stage

Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man

Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change the 21st Century

Second to None: A Documentary History of American Women

A History of Their Own: Women In Europe

Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America

Generations: A Century of Women Speak about Their Lives

Home-Alone America: The Hidden Tole of Day Care, Behavorial Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes

The Women's Room

Women and Men in Society

Issues in Feminism: An Introduction to Women's Studies

Women of Ideas (and What Men Have Done to Them)

The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America

Women's Roots

The Women's History of the World

Lifting the Veil: The Feminine Face of Science

Women of the Four Winds: The Adventures of Four of America's First Women Explorers

The Underside of History Volume I

The Underside of History Volume II

Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism

The Mismeasure of Woman: Why Women Are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex

Sex, Art, and American Culture

The Psychology of Women

Women at Work

Woman's Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society

Women of the Forest

Brave New Families: Stories of Domestic Upheaval in late 20C America

Misdiagnosis: Woman As A Disease

The Mask of Motherhood: How Becoming a Mother Changes Our Lives and Why We Never Talk about It

A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother

American Mom: Motherhood, Politics, and Humble Pie

Food and Whine: Confessions of an End of the Millennium Mom

Fruitful: A Real Mother in the Modern World

Mothers Talking: Sharing the Secret

Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness--and Liberalism--the the Women of America

The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men

Ever Since Adam and Eve

Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood

What's a Smart Woman Like You Doing at Home?

Mother Journeys: Feminist Write about Mothering

Ever Since Eve: Personal Reflections on Childbirth

The American Way of Birth

Mothers and Such: Views of American Women and Why They Changed

The Motherhood Report: How Women Feel about Being Mothers

The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued

Good Enough Mother: Changing Expectations for Ourselves

Margaret Sanger and the American Birth Control Movement

Sam Walton: Made in America

The Girl from Purple Mountain: Love, Honor, War, and One Family's Journey from China to America

Waiting: True Confessions of a Waitress

Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson

Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir of America's Fall from Grace

21 Dog Years: Doing Time at Amazon.com

Not by the Sword: How the Love of a Cantor and His Family Transformed a Klansman

M.D.: One Doctor's Adventures Among the Famour and Infamous from the Jungles of Panama to a Park Avenue Practice

Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation

Straight from the Heart: My Life in Politics and Other Places (Ann Richards)

A Reporter's Life (Walter Cronkite)

Not Without My Daughter: A True Story

Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia

Zoya's Story: An Afghan Woman's Struggle for Freedom

My Forbidden Face: Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman's Story

A Bomb in the Brain: A Heroic Tale of Science, Surgery, and Survival

Trial by Fire: A Woman Correspondent's Journey to the Frontline

A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana

The Dark Side of Camelot

Washington: The Indispensible Man

Mornings on Horseback

A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

Seven from Heaven: The Miracle of the McCaughy Septuplets

Galileo's Daugher: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love

Abraham Lincoln

The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey

Great Harry

Her Little Majesty: The Life of Queen Victoria

Lilibet: An Intimate Portrait of Elizabeth II

Storytelling with the Flannel Board

Ronald Reagan: An American Life

House of Sand and Fog

A Walk in the Woods

The Birth of Venus

The Known World

The Emperor of Scent

A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906

What Einstein Told His Cook Volume II

Plain Speaking: A Candid and Revealing Portrait of the 33rd President in His Own Voice

Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles

Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do about It

From Sundails to Atomic Clocks

One Hundred Days: My Unexpected Journey from Doctor to Patient

Ether Day: The Strange Tale of America's Greatest Medical Discovery and the Haunted Men Who Made It

The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World

Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior

A Natural History of the Senses

In a House of Dreams and Glass: Becoming a Psychiatrist

The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer: What Is the Question?

The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World

Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature

The Medicine of ER or How We Almost Die

The Physics of Star Trek

The Secret Life of Germs: Observations and Lessons from a Microbe Hunter

How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter

First, Do No Harm: The Dramatic Story of Real Doctors and Patients Making Impossible Choices at a Big-City Hospital

Why We Get Sick: The New Theory of Darwinian Medicine

The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy and the Development of Western Thought

Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences

The Stone Age Present: How Evolution Shapes Modern Life

Paradigms Lost: Images of Man in the Mirror of Science

Exploding the Gene Myth

Leprosy: Diagnosis and Management

Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo

Doctors: The Biography of Medicine

Nobel Prize Women in Science

The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe

Myths, Models, and Paradigms

The Birth of a New Physics

Medicine at the Crossroads

The Selfish Gene

The Construction of Modern Science

The Cosmic Blueprint

The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy

The Medical Detectives

Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Culture

Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic

Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plague

The Brethren

The Lazarus Child

The Nanny Diaries

The Bonesetter's Daughter

Drowning Ruth

The Voyage of the Narwhal

The Corrections

The Stone Diaries

Bridget Jones' Diary

The Curious Incidnet of the Dog in the Nighttime

Angle of Repose

Back When We Were Grownups

A Perfect Arrangement

The Cobra Event

Paper Trail

Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream

Little Altars Everywhere

Midwives

Holidays in Hell

Parliament of Whores

Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut

Give War a Chance

Slaves in the Family

Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam

The Lost Tribe: A Harrowing Passage Into New Guinea's Heart of Darkness

Family Man

Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything

Never Done: A History of American Housework

Out of Silence: A Journey into Language

The Search for the Perfect Language

Middletown, America: One Town's Passage from Trauma to Hope

The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community

Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News

I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers

The Myth of the Welfare Queen

Why We Buy: The Science of Shupping

Feasting the Heart: 52 Commentaries for the Air

Alpha Beta: How 26 Letters Shaped the Western World

A World of Their Own Making: Myth, Ritual, and the Quest for Family Values

Fearless: Real Truth about Risk, Safety, and Security in a Time of Terrorism

The 9/11 Commission Report

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana

The Rest of Us: Dispatches from the Mother Ship

Calendar: Humanity's Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year

Walden

The Great Gatsby

Of Mice and Men and Cannery Row

The Grapes of Wrath

East of Eden

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Roots

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

The Physics of Star Trek

The Ships of Earth

Cultural Anthropology

The Changling

Survived to Tell: An Autobiography

Stand As a Witness: The Biography of Ardeth Greene Kapp

We begin with a quiz: How many book-length biographies of LDS women can you name?
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The Salt Lake City 14th Ward Album Quilt

In the 1990s, Carol Nielson inherited a quilt. Or, to be more precise, half a quilt.

Her words on that occasion came by instinct: "Only a man could do that." She was right; her husband's great-great grandfather had cut the quilt down the middle rather than slight one of his daughters. Intrigued by the quilt, Nielson took advantage of the fact that each block contained the name of its creator and eventually wrote a book consisting of mini-biographies of each woman. At this point, gentle reader, you are perhaps tempted to adopt that glazed expression the Saints share when someone's sacrament meeting talk on family history shifts into a reminiscence of their family history. There's nothing more boring than someone else's family history, is there?

But this book deserves more than glazed stares: not only are the women from some of the pioneer families that you know best (Woodruff, Young, Richardson; the 14th Ward included Temple Square and was home to many Church leaders), but their lives in 1857 give a snapshot of the Church, with converts from the four corners gathered to Utah--living The Principle. Polygamy is a major issue in this book; virtually every quilter shared her husband.

Which brings us to the major weakness of this work: Nielson is not a historian. A schoolteacher by trade, she approaches difficult interpretive issues such as polygamy in a rather naive way. In a brief explanation in the introduction, she states that the Church practiced polygamy simply in order to "raise up seed." (Considering Joseph Smith's polyandry, this is hardly a compelling argument.) Her rosy approach to polygamy is never more obvious than when she writes about sister wives who shared the burden of entertaining church and government leaders: "a formidable task that would make any woman wish for a sister wife." (I'd probably be content to hire a caterer.) At one point, in what one can only hope was an unreflective moment, she refers to polygamy as the "higher law."

Further, Nielson's prose is often wooden, occasionally clunky, and sometimes even confusing. She frequently fumbles by attempting to find some metaphor for the woman's life in her quilt square ("The . . . severed block, with the first and last names separated, lucklessly served as a portent of the future. Matilda's tenure as wife of Isaac Rhoads was short.")

Yet the book is still worthwhile for the glimmers that emerge of lives barely included in most historical records. They range from six-year-old Bulah Woodruff (whose father, Wilford Woodruff, would later write that she was "on the road to destruction" in a classic example of the ability of historical sources to hide more than they reveal and to tease the modern reader beyond that which she is able to bear) to Josephine Richards (a 'countess' who, after reading Les Miserables, sent a letter to Victor Hugo suggesting that the Gospel was the cure for the ills of which he wrote) to Deborah Turnbow (who buried ten of her thirteen children). There's also interesting historical trivia here; most Saints are probably not aware, for example, that independent Relief Societies existed in the period after Nauvoo and before their formal church-wide reorganization in 1867. The lived reality of polygamy (the devil is in the details) is also a source for interesting factoids: "For subsequent wives, the title 'Mrs.' customarily preceded their own name," while only the first wife would use her husband's first name after the 'Mrs.' I did not know--until I read of the experience of quilter Mary S. Snow--that on one occasion (which Nielson calls "not an isolated incident"), a woman's sister wife was none other than her own mother.

Nielson notes that two incidents crystalized her commitment to writing this book: she had a photo labelled with the man's name and "and wife." Since he was polygamous, she didn't know which wife was in the photo. She contacted one of the man's descendents for help. He didn't know but he attempted to reassure her: "Women weren't important back then, you know. It really doesn't matter which wife it is." Later, she was thrilled to find a good-sized biography of one of the quilter's husbands. Imagine her dismay when she flipped through it and found this: "Unfortunately, there is not space to go into the history of the wives, nor their courage, patience, and other excellent qualities."

It is that type of thinking which explains why, despite its flaws, I'm grateful that Nielson did "go into" the history of the women who created this quilt. The brief biographies, evocative photos of the women, and large reproductions of each quilt square--all on heavy paper, with the quilt photos in full color--make this book a fitting testament to those pioneer women who devoted their talents (and their precious fabric) to relieving the needs of others.

Cross posted to Times & Seasons

Daughters of Light by Carol Lynn Pearson

This slender compilation of anecdotes is designed to chronicle the exercise of gifts of the spirit--by women. Chapters are devoted to the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, healing and power over evil spirits. It was, apparently, another fruit of the years that Leonard Arrington was in charge of the Church Archives.

The Girl from Botany Bay by Carolly Erickson

Mary Bryant was born into a poor family in England. She became a 'highwaywoman,' was sentenced to death, was given a reprieve and sent to Australia with the first batch of convicts, married and had two children, escaped to Timor in a 25-foot boat, was caught, saw both children die, was sent back to England to be punished, caught the fancy of the nation and Samuel Johnson, was given a reprieve, and promptly disappeared from the historical record. Wow.

In Sacred Lonliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith by Todd Compton

This is almost two separate books:

(1) Mini-biographies of the almost three dozen women who were married to Joseph Smith. On this level, it is a fascinating read--full of the trials, daily life, and amazing faith of these early LDS women.

(2) An interpretation of early LDS polygamy. This section was more of a mixed bag for me. I think that Compton's idea of these marriages as 'dynastic' probably makes sense; but I also think that his condemnation of polygamy as institutional neglect is a little overdone since not a one of these women experiences what we might call 'normal' LDS polygamy: married to Joseph Smith and then, usually, either Brigham Young or Heber C. Kimball after the martyrdom, they did not experience what most polygamous wives did.

This is, nonetheless, one of the most important texts for understanding early Mormonism.

Under the Banner of Heaven

I have a friend –I know her through the homeschooling community–with an interest in the Church. She told me that one of the books that she read about the church was Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. Now, she’s not stupid–she didn’t expect it to be unbiased–but she did want to know my reaction to it. So I read it and then sent her this email:

Hi xxxxxxxxx,

I read Under the Banner of Heaven this weekend, and I think my reaction to it is probably about what your reaction would be to a book that argued that homeschooling should be illegal on the basis of a few abusive families who hid their abuse by claiming to homeschool.

I was really amazed at how fast and loose Krakauer was with the evidence. I could give you literally dozens of examples, but I doubt you want to read all that, so let me just pick a few:

(1) His entire explanation for Joseph Smith’s polygamy is that it was about fulfilling his sexual lust with what Krakauer calls ‘nubile adolescents.’ This thesis becomes a little less convincing when you know the ages of some of the women that he married: 47, 50/51, 53/54, 58, and 56 (while Joseph Smith was in his 30s).

(2) His basic thesis is that religious belief in general–and LDS belief in particular–causes people to be violent because rationality goes out the window when people think they can talk to God. This is a fairly easy thesis to prove or disprove–about all it takes is a quick look at the statistics to see if areas with high LDS populations have a higher or lower violent crime rate than the national average. Utah County is often used for this type of thing since it has about a 90% LDS population: “An FBI report showed the Provo-Orem area to have the second-lowest rate of violent crime in the nation for the year 2000.” Of course, Krakauer doesn’t mention this but instead focuses on a few lurid and sensational cases–as if there were a single minority group (racial, religious, lifestyle, whatever) that couldn’t be painted as a hothouse for violence on the basis of a few of its members.

(3) He writes about a revelation John Taylor had in 1886 that stated that polygamy would never be ended and that some church members would be called to be ostracized by the church for practicing polygamy. What he doesn’t mention in the text is that his only source for these revelations is . . . a book printed by the FLDS Church! But in the text, he makes it sound as if the revelations are only disputed by a few angry LDS leaders when, in fact, no historian would uncritically accept these as a historical source given their attestation.

(4) He pins the blame for the Mountains Meadow Massacre cleanly on Brigham Young, despite the fact that one of his own main source for that chapter [Juanita Brooks] wrote, “The complete—the absolute—truth of the affair can probably never be evaluated by any human being; attempts to understand the forces which culminated in it and those which were set into motion by it are all very inadequate at best” (Brooks, p. 223).

(4) He often seemed to confuse the doctrine and practice of the LDS and FLDS churches; whether this was deliberate, sloppy writing, or based on his own ignorance of the differences, I can’t say. There are many false statements in the book, such as that the LDS church strongly discourages marriage between black and white members which is completely false. (In fact, a respected couple in my own congregation is an interracial couple.) Another one is that members–particularly women–are encouraged to be mindless sheep. But his own example of Brenda Lafferty as a headstrong woman who wouldn’t tolerate any nonsense suggests otherwise.

I could go on with similar examples from virtually every page, but I think you’ve gotten the feel for my response to this book. I hope that if it raised any specific questions for you, you’ll ask me.

Julie

Note: Lest you think that it is only one quirky woman using this book as a primer on Mormonism, go do a search on Amazon using the keyword ‘Mormon.’ This book is the bestselling book under that keyword. Ugh. Those interested in a more thorough response than mine should read this.

Cross posted from Times & Seasons.

Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang

Wow. Mao makes Hitler look like a grade-school bully. Wow. While this book doesn't psychologize Mao much, it was interesting to watch his unremitting focus on personal power and his complete disregard for human life play out against the fates of the 70 million people who he killed. Wow. It is fascinating to watch a character assissination against someone who deserves it.

Light from Heaven by Jan Karon

Is there a word for books that are like comfort food? That's what Karon's books are, and they fulfill the purpose of their creation.

Hungry Planet by Peter Menzel

This is easily one of the ten most interesting books that I have ever read; Menzel went to thirty families around the world and asked them to buy a week's worth of food and then photographed it. Simple and amazing.

David O. McKay: Around the World by Hugh J. Cannon

Every writer's worst nightmare actually came true for Hugh J. Cannon: the only copy of his manuscript was "misplaced" by the publisher.

And it wasn't just any manuscript either: it was the record of his 1920 round-the-world trip with David O. McKay (then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve), on assignment from the First Presidency as "special missionaries" to visit all of the missions and Church schools. The manuscript turned up recently and has now been published. This book is somewhat sketchy about its history, tersely attributing its disappearance to "a change of personnel at the publisher" and giving no more detail about its recovery than that it was found in the McKay home. One almost suspects that there is more to the story.

That would become a frequent impression while reading this book: that I wasn't getting the whole story. McKay and Cannon were on assignment to assess the missions but virtually nothing is said about those missions in this book, save that the missionaries were virtuous and brave. We know from other works on McKay that this isn't all that they found (see here for a reference in Woodger's biography to some of the problems that McKay found in Tahiti). So if you approach this book looking for Church history or doctrine, you will almost certainly be disappointed.

However, if what you want is a good story, well-told in the quaint, wry style of a superior early-twentieth-century wordsmith, you will be delighted. Let me give you a taste of Cannon's writing:

Numerous invitations to dinners and other social affairs where refreshments were served were extended to the special missionaries during the weeks immediately preceeding their departure. Such acts, intended as kindness and greatly appreciated, were poor preparation for a rough ocean voyage. Some of these delightful dinners were destined to come up later in a most distressing manner. Have you ever been aboard a vessel on an extremely rough sea? Have you felt it roll and toss and plunge, then when struck full force by a mighty wave which washes its decks, felt it shudder and tremble as though it had received a death blow and must assuredly sink? And all the while the stomachs of the sensitive passengers are performing similar evolutions and are dancing about as wildly as the ship itself. Frequently not more than a dozen people out of several hundred passengers were at meals. . . . Brother McKay, being the leader of this tour, maintained his supremacy in the matter of seasickness as in all other things. He does nothing by halves, but treats every subject exhaustively, going to the very bottom of it, and this occasion was no exception. Seasickness is undertaken with the same vigorous energy which he displays in running for a train. In either case those in front should dodge.

Seasickness becomes a recurrent theme in this book; they did, after all, travel 37,869 miles by water (Cannon is big on precise numbers: in India, he tells us, he removed 157 fleas from his body). Here's a quotation from a letter that Elder McKay wrote home:

. . . before attempting to dress I ate an apple which Hugh J. handed me. Without hurry I put on my clothes and started for the deck; but the swaying staircase and the madly moving world of water stirred my feelings with a desire for solitude. Yielding, I hurried to my room, where in less time than it takes to tell you, the apple and I parted company forever. I wondered what there was in common between a Jonathan apple and a Jonah that would produce such like effects. Though I arrived at no definite conclusion, one thing was most certain: My sympathy was wholly with the whale. . . . Good-bye last night's dinner! Good-bye yesterday's luncheon! And during the next sixty hours, good-bye everything I had ever eaten since I was a babe on Mother's knee! I'm not sure I didn't cross the threshold into the pre-existent state . . . [He then describes the motion of the ship on rough seas and concludes that] the dance floor is not the only place where disgraceful, degenerate movements may lead to ill.

As a travelogue, this book succeeds marvelously. The photos are plentiful and rich; the wonder with which McKay and Cannon apprehend chopsticks and rickshas, live human shark bait, Maori war dances, and the mystery and magic of the international date line is such that we aren't surprised that Cannon decided to leave out his notes from the zone conferences. To witness pre-globalization travelers describe a "Hui Tau" (the Maori take on a regional conference, replete with circus-sized tents and days-long feasts) is to instantly be able to forgive them their politically incorrect descriptions of the peoples that they encounter. It was all new and it was, to use Cannon's favorite word, as he does at least a half dozen times, "indescribable."

As prophet, President McKay had a strong desire to see this book published. I'm glad he did, and I'm sorry that it took so long to find that manuscript. This unusual little gem is a real departure from the standard 'church books' and a fun read.

Cross-posted to Times and Seasons

Baghdad Without a Map by Tony Horowitz

Just as fun and quirky as his books on Australia and Confederate war re-enactors, this one was a good ride. He paints with a broad brush (is every Yemeni a lazy, qat-addicted criminal?), but if you suspend your inner skeptic, it makes for an enjoyable book.

Early Christians in Disarray

Can you really understand what the Restoration is if you don't have your mind around what the Great Apostasy was?

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barnara Robinson

Oh, this was good. Another read-outloud to the kids.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

Another read-to-the-kids. It's impossible to say anything about a book like this or Harry Potter, so I don't even try.

The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis

(I realized that I should include here the books that I read to the kids.)

I'm still wondering if we should have held off and read LWW first . . .

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

With three (slightly) interwoven plots and a palimpset of the natural world behind the characters' actions, this rich and unusual novel held my interest from start to finish. Recommended.

The Girlfriends' Guide to Toddlers

Ah. . . mind candy. I don't agree with much of Iovine's white bread advice, but that's hardly the point, is it? The point is that it is mildly funny and you can read it without all cylinders engaged. And how can you not like someone who describes toddler feet as pork chops with toenails? Recommended for people with the flu, or whatever.

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

So this was an engrossing story, but it was also soap-opera-ish, a little too bawdy, and guilty of the most common sin of historical fiction (which is the employment of the proto-feminist protagonist). But I still got wound up in the story. Recommended?

The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare

Not a book I would have picked up on my own--although homeschoolers are always raving about it--but I read this for my book group. It started slowly, with wooden writing and two-dimensional characters. But at some point, I found myself actually interested in the story. It metamorphosed into a rather good read. For me this is saying a lot because I usually detest historical fiction set in biblical times for a whole slew of reasons. Recommended.

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

This was a fun little read. I must confess that some of his stories are just a little too perfect and I found myself wondering if he was, ah, embellishing just a little. But this was still an enjoyable book--a nice light read with good background detail and real interest. Slightly recommended.

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus

This was a good read. Not life changing, but an interesting story well-told with some unusual twists and excellent character development. Recommended.

Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz

Wow. I loved this book. It takes real talent to handle so many diverse stories (hard-core Civil War reenactments, the battle over the rebel flag, Gone with the Wind, history in the Alabama schools, etc.), to tell them with a fair hand, and to keep such heavy topics light. This book is a model for what good nonfiction can be. Highly recommended.

The Mermaid Chair by Susan Monk Kidd

I adored The Secret Life of Bees and this was just as good; Sue Monk Kidd has a gift. There's an indefinable essence that makes a novel engaging; this book has it.

(Although I am still feeling guilty for how much I was rooting for a married woman to have an affair with a monk . . .)

Rising Tide by John M. Barry

Wow. Every once in awhile, a book comes along that takes an obscure sort of a topic and just Forrest Gumps it (that is, shows how the entire world revolves around it). This is one of those books. Engineering, passion, engineering and passion, race relations, American aristocrats--this book has it all. Highly recommended.

A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester

Eh, you would have thought that the Krakatoa disaster would have taught me that Winchester can't be trusted. He takes a fascinating topic (the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire) and hides it in a wandering narrative (plate tectonics, Pentecostalism, California's natural history, a cup of coffee he had in Ohio . . .).

Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball by Edward Kimball

If you liked the recent President McKay biography, you are going to love the new biography of President Kimball.

President Kimball’s son Edward wrote a biography of his father in 1977, which turned out to be really bad timing since the most significant event of Kimball’s administration–and, arguably, of all of twentieth-century Church history–happened the very next year. That biography was (and still is) lauded as an unusually honest portrait of a Church President. (And you should read it before you read the new one.) I’m not sure why it took almost thirty years for the followup biography, but I can assure you that it was worth the wait.

Like the McKay book, this one fills some of the gaps in Church history. I’m too young to remember the ERA battle, the Hoffman affair, the Howard Hughes will, and the Church’s opposition to the MX missile. The author frequently uses before-and-after quotations from the General Handbook of Instruction in order to show how policies changed during his father’s administration. And, just as the McKay book did, there are lots of wonderful factoids here: Did you know that early converts in Africa were disproportionately male? That part of the responsibility of the committee that revised the hymn book in the 1970s was to use more gender-neutral language? That for a period ‘instructional solemn assemblies’ were held to train local priesthood leaders?

Edward Kimball writes that it was his father’s wish for his biography be “warts and all.” And it is. No flinching, no sanitizing. Here is a prophet who occasionally skips Church and becomes depressed over his physical limitations. We see a man who is overzealous in calling his inactive son to repentance and who later wished that he had been gentler in The Miracle of Forgiveness. We see the General Young Women’s President, Elaine Cannon, changing President Kimball’s mind about a major policy issue. We see the diminutive Kimball spending the night in the posh home of a stake president where he has to jump into the bed because it is so high off of the ground. And when he does, it breaks.

But we also see a Prophet of God:

On one occasion, while a Church security staff member was driving President Kimball home, Spencer leaned back to rest. After a bit, he suddenly sat bolt upright, took off his glasses, and looked intently at the driver. “Is this your first family?” he asked. Taken aback, the driver answered, “No, sir, I was married before. I tried all I could, but it did not work out.” President Kimball said, “I’m sorry if I have said something to cause you pain.” He lay back again briefly, then sat up again, looked intently, and asked, “How is your son?” The driver, who had only daughters by his second marriage, explained that he had not been allowed to see the son by his first marriage since the child was an infant, nearly twenty years earlier. They arrived at the Kimball home, and Spencer, embracing him, said, “You have good things to look forward to.” Puzzled, the driver asked [secretary] Arthur Haycock why the President would be reading his personnel file. Arthur assured him that the President had not seen the file. “How then,” the driver asked, “did he know about my family situation?” Arthur smiled, “That’s why he’s President of the Church.”

I don’t have a problem with ‘warts and all’ history, except that some authors forget about the ‘and all.’ Edward Kimball didn’t. This is a stellar, spiritual, honest, and amazing portrait of a prophet. But that’s not all.

Each book comes with a CD, which includes the full text of this biography, several other biographies of President and Sister Kimball, many scholarly articles, photographs, and audio clips. (It would have been nice if they had included the text of some of President Kimball’s more noteworthy talks but, alas, they didn’t.) The audio clips include some from before and others from after his throat surgery and his own description of the revelation on the priesthood–from a talk given in South Africa only a few months after the revelation was received. The CD also includes what is called the ‘working draft’ of this biography. A publisher’s preface in the book hints at why it may have been included:

The publisher and the biographer do not agree on the interpretations or weight of importance given to a number of events, or the choices of characterization of some of the people.

I read the working draft, which is color-coded to indicate what material is and isn’t in the final draft. (But I should note that I found at least a half-dozen errors in the color-coding system.) I would describe the omitted material as follows:

–About half of the omissions are fat that any good editor would have cut–interesting stuff, perhaps, that just wasn’t relevant to a biography of President Kimball and would have made a long book too long.
–Many omissions involve material that recounted differences of opinion between members of the Quorum of the Twelve and/or the First Presidency. The final book often includes the conflict without naming those who disagreed with President Kimball.
–Many omissions serve to make the final book less liberal than the working draft. Not only are some of Edward Kimball’s more liberal views removed, but some of President Kimball’s are as well. For example, the final book offers no sympathy to Sonia Johnson (a vocal supporter of the ERA who was excommunicated), but the working draft does by including her refutation of some of the charges against her. The draft portrays President Kimball as more sympathetic toward Johnson than the final book does. There are only two instances where the working draft is more conservative than the final book: President Kimball’s personal opinions about oral sex and birth control were omitted.
–Text on topics that might be embarrassing to the Church (failed policies, bad public relations, anti-Mormon efforts, “unannounced missions,” changes in temple work, compensation of GAs, discussion of pre-Adamites, Kimball’s suggestion that the priesthood ban may have been an error, etc.) were omitted from the final draft. Whether these omissions are due to discomfort over the subject or the assessment that they weren’t particularly relevant to a biography of the Church President is difficult to determine.
–Other omissions create a less-flawed portrait of the President; let’s just say that after reading the draft, one wonders if some of J. Golden Kimball’s proclivities were genetic.

But, overall, the omissions do not profoundly change the book, with one exception: the draft suggests that President Kimball had already reached a conclusion (based on inspiration) about extending the priesthood to all men before the famous revelation, which functioned more to ensure that recalcitrant members of the Quorum of the Twelve would fully support the change.

What didn’t I like? Not much. Many of the photographs don’t have captions and that’s annoying. While I can appreciate the desire to put most footnotes on the CD to save space in the book, it is somewhat disconcerting not to have a citation at hand. The footnotes that are included are often interesting factoids, if not completely germane to the topic at hand. But these are minor quibbles.

I am surprised that Deseret Book published this; it covers a lot of ground that one doesn’t normally find in a Deseret Book: this includes doctrinal matters (Adam-God theory, blood atonement) as well as historical incidents (the prophet asking an apostle to change a talk before publishing it, a First Presidency statement meant to clarify that a statement made by the prophet was a personal opinion). I’m going to be optimistic and hope that this book is the first of a long line of candid and compelling works from Deseret. I believe the Saints will be the better for it; my overarching impression of President Kimball after reading this book is that he was an incredibly humble, human, and powerful prophet. As his wife described him, this book represents him: “It is too much to say that he is perfect, but he comes wondrously close.”

Cross-posted to Times and Seasons.

Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman

Rough Stone Rolling is the definitive biography of Joseph Smith for this generation. Bushman does an able, if not artful, job of telling the prophet’s story. His reading of Joseph’s use of seer stones, of his troubled relationship with his financially unsuccessful father, of the Book of Mormon’s countercultural take on Native Americans, and the changing place of women and blacks in unfolding LDS theology are gems. But Joseph Smith, in this book, is not a majestic, triumphant, haloed, barely-mortal dispensation head. He is, by Bushman’s portrait, a flawed man—one making many mistakes and subject to many weaknesses. His straightforward style might be a little jarring to those used to sanitized Church history, but this book is and will be the benchmark biography of the founding prophet for a long time.

More on this book forthcoming at Times and Seasons.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

This book was nearly perfect in every way.

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

This book owns more awards and critic's praise than anything I've ever read. But it isn't all that. It was--OK. The constant flashforwards were unnerving, confusing. The plot only held together as a series of slightly related short stories. Not really recommended.

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

Subtitled "How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less," this is a tragic, funny, amazing tale of a woman who survives by her wits as her husband drinks his paycheck. Highly recommended.

I Love Mormons: A New Way to Share Christ with Latter-day Saints, by David L. Rowe

The techniques that Evangelicals use to convert Mormons to 'traditional Christianity' do not work. The same cannot be said for the method proposed by David L. Rowe in his new book.

Why the Church is as True as the Gospel by Eugene England

This didn't do much for me. Sorry.

The Emperor of Scent by Chandler Burr

Luca Turin, apparently, proved that the prevailing theory for how smell works was wrong. But academic researchers who were not interested in seeing their life's work consigned to the dustbin were not impressed. Professional researchers (i.e., perfume company hacks) were not interested in getting laid off.

So no one believed him. And that's why Chandler Burr calls this a scientific morality tale about the failure of a new idea to take hold because of political and financial pressures.

Not being a scientist, I'm not sure what to believe. But when Burr claims that every major olfaction scientist that he interviewed told him that Turin's work was bunk but, no, they hadn't actually read his paper and they weren't going to because they were too busy, well, it doesn't sound for the anti-Turin camp.

An odd and fascinating book-highly recommended.

Hearts Petals ed. by Mary Jane Woodger

I enjoyed reading the letters that President McKay sent to his wife. However, I thought many poor decisions were made in the presentation of the letters: everything from using endnotes instead of footnote to an almost-imposssible-to-read font to not providing necessary background information. Still, these letters are worth reading.

Home-Alone America by Mary Eberstadt

I was prepared to like this book; why shouldn't I like something that justifies my lifestyle choices? But while I agree wholeheartedly with Eberstadt's thesis (specifically, that children who have absent fathers or mothers who work long hours are at a higher risk for all sorts of dangers), her book is terrible, terrible, terrible! I'm tempted to go line by line for the sheer joy of the smackdown; such horribly-argued rhetoric deserves to be dismantled. However, it would take a long time and this book just isn't worth it. I'll let one example speak for literally every single page of this book.

Eberstadt begins with a lengthy explanation of why children in day care have more illnesses than other children. (No one doubts this.) Then she mentions the argument that these early illnesses may be justifiable because they result in the child having fewer illnesses down the room. She dismisses this in one sentence as poor justification. No real reason given.

But this deserves more. What is the data? Do 60 childhood colds prevent one teenage cold? Does one childhood cold prevent 60 teenage ones? What about complications? In any case, is it justifiable to injure little children to prevent harm later on? What effect do the childhood illnesses have on working mothers? These are important questions that Eberstadt doesn't answer.

I only continued reading for the same reason that people gape at trainwrecks: I couldn't really believe how bad it was. I'm sad that such an important argument was mangled in Eberstadt's hands: her holely rhetoric has done the cause more harm than good.

The Parenting Breakthrough by Merilee Boyack

You just gotta love any book that has a picture of a seven-year-old boy cleaning a toilet on the cover.

Merrilee Browne Boyack’s new book The Parenting Breakthrough: A Real-Life Plan to Teach Your Kids to Work, Save Money, and Be Truly Independent focuses on teaching real-life skills, particularly those relating to personal finance. I probably don’t need to say that many LDS parents seem to be doing a poor job in this department. I’ve been in the home of an LDS teen who, despite not having a job, had fifty-one (yes, I counted) Clinique lipsticks on the bathroom counter. I’ve known returned missionaries who have been tempted to steal toilet paper rolls from the Institute building because of the financial pressure caused by credit card debt. So I’m pleased that Boyack, a mother of four almost-grown sons and an estate attorney with a degree in Finance, has put together a plan for teaching basic personal management skills to kids.

Her idea is simple but profound. In a nutshell, here it is: sit down with your spouse and write a list of all of the skills necessary for independent living. Then, assign each task to an age and be sure that your child learns that skill at that age. She provides a sample chart in the book, and while I’d quibble with some of her specifics (What’s the point of teaching a nine-year-old to pump gas? And don’t wait until sixteen to teach a child how to understand advertising!), the idea is sound and should prevent the proverbial scene of a mother teaching her son to iron the night before he leaves for the MTC. She write, “the real problem with doing everything ourselves is that we end up always doing everything ourselves. And our children don’t grow up; they just get bigger.”

Boyack’s emphasis on training children to be self-sufficient also provides an important theoretical underpinning to counter the tendency for LDS moms to want to do everything for their children as a mark of their devotion. That alone makes this a worthwhile read for anyone who is buffeted on one side by the current push toward hypermothering and the sad current in LDS culture to be the perfect Mormon mom, evidenced by having a countless multitude of startched, shiny, smily–and did I mention quiet–kids in the pew next to you. Boyack strongly argues that it is better to have self-sufficient, long-haired, and fiscally responsible kids than to present the perfect public image by having assembled the children yourself. Her story of allowing her three-year-old to make a PB & J on the floor while the other memberd of the Relief Society Presidency (whom she’d nicknamed Martha Stewart I and Martha Stewart II) watched in horror is a worthy tale indeed.

In addition to strongly making the point that parents should teach their children the basics of independent living, she provides practical hints for accomplishing this. I can’t wait until my sons are a little older. The first time one of them lusts over a big-ticket item, I’m going to suggest that he take out a loan from the First National Bank of Smith. We’ll follow Boyack’s suggestion and agree to a contract with a 20% interest rate and collateral. When my sweet boy falls behind in his payments, I’ll sell his collateral on ebay. I’d rather he learn that lesson on a 300$ stereo as a teen than a 30,000$ car when he’s trying to support a family. She has lots of creative suggestions for teaching personal financial responsibility to teens.

I also appreciated her gender-neutral approach to teaching children: she emphasizes that both sons and daughters need to think about the impact that their career choices will have on their familes and that both need to learn to save. (I sometimes feel that this is only emphasized for the young men for their missions.) She earns high marks in my book for castigating a father who didn’t want to teach his daughter how to change the oil in her car. She also recommends that fathers teach some ‘girl things’ and mothers some ‘guy things.’

But when Boyack covers spirituality and discipline, the book loses its luster. While her information is good, there’s nothing that’s new if you’ve read a few of the more popular parenting books. Because the previous chapters do cover topics that are rarely discussed and have innovative suggestions, it makes these ones all the more disappointing by contrast. And I object to her ‘because I’m the Mom, that’s why’ approach; I’ve had quite a bit of success with children obeying freely when they understand the reason behind my request.

I have to admit that I found her chummy tone offputting at times. She introduces herself this way:

I’m also an attorney. I heard that–you just went, “euuwww.” I knew you would. But I run my law practice part-time from my home, and in the meantime I do lots of stuff just like you. I’m not a psychologist or anything like that.

I’m not entirely sure what tone I want a parenting book to take: I don’t want to hear the disembodied voice of unquestionable authority, but I don’t want to be chatting on the playground, either. Boyack veers a little too much to the latter, but it isn’t insufferable. Where her tone does get her into trouble, however, is where it allows cruel humor. Sometimes she’s spot-on (I won’t try to recount the story of the woman who dabbed at her tears in sacrament meeting with a feminine hygeine product; you’ll need to read that one for yourself for full effect, but I will tell you that I admire anyone who describes a large fight erupting during Family Home Evening as “the activity portion of our home evening"), but other times it borders on the blasphemous (I don’t think the Lord does anything to us for “sheer entertainment effect"). At its worst, it mocks:

Another preparation tactic is as follows: We see people doing horrendously menial work (like holding up a sign on the road for construction workers) and we say, “Gee, no one could make him go to college!”

For someone who is very, very convincing when she writes about the ability of parents to shape their children’s behaviors, she seems unaware of the message that this type of comment will send her children. (How much better it would be if she handed her kid the classifieds and said, “Pretend you have a GED and are looking for a job. What can you do and how much will you make? Now pretend you have an MS in Electrical Engineering. What jobs are available and how much will you make?")

Despite the flaws, the practical suggestions for teaching personal responsibility make this book a worthwhile read for LDS parents who want their children to move out of the basement someday.

Cross-posted from Times and Seasons

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz

Horwitz cleverly merges the story of Captain Cook's three unbelievable voyages of discovery with the tale of his own recreation of the trip. Captain Cook did unfathomable things and Horwitz has fun comparing Cook's adventures with his own. This is the best kind of history and travelogue. Highly recommended.

The Book: A History of the Bible

I should warn potential readers: there’s a real danger that you will drool on the pages of Christopher de Hamel’s new book.

While some parts are a little ponderous, you won’t drool because you’ve fallen asleep. There’s enough good trivia (the scribes creating Hebrew Bibles circumvented the prohibition on illustrations by drawing pictures using miniscule text instead of lines) and excellent one-liners ("The Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God may be the most important unreadable book in the world.” and “Sparke takes immodest pleasure in adding that when the Royalist armies beseiged Worcester in 1642, Ash hid his illicit fortune down the privy and, in trying to dig out his money some weeks later, was overcome by the smell and died.") interspersed to keep you well awake. You’ll drool over the pictures.

Luscious, oversized photographs of every step of the Bible’s history–from pages of the Dead Sea Scrolls to richly illuminated medieval manuscripts, to rather optimistic translations of the Bible into Hindustani and Mohawk to (my personal favorite) a modern illuminated manuscript that’s still a work in progress. The gold used to highlight the lines in Jesus’ genealogy in the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel appears to transcend the page it is on–and the page of this book. It took my breath away.

Perhaps what I most appreciated about this book was its effort to trace the history of the Bible as a book, not (as is more commonly done) as a source of theology. De Hamel only takes the occasional foray into philosphical issues, and these are interesting.

There’s no reference to Mormons or Mormonism here, but there are some interesting ideas for the Saints to chew on:

(1) De Hamel’s comments on the reception of the Latin edition of the Bible translated by Jerome (known as the Vulgate) provide an interesting data point for comparison with the LDS Church’s use of the KJV:

It is a curious fact that at many stages in the Bible’s history, contemporary translations into current languages have often been regarded with unease. The words of the Old Latin translation, by contrast, must by Jerome’s time have sounded archaic, and therefore seemed to many people to be more fitting for a biblical text. It is interesting that the Vulgate never really gained acceptance until its language too began to seem archaic. In the period when its supporters defended it most fanatically, the late Middle Ages, it was obsolete.

(2) De Hamel notes that the initial reaction by many Bible-believing people to modern finds of ancient texts was one of some hesitancy: there was a real fear that the Dead Sea Scrolls would suggest that in the first century, the Old Testament was a very different book. But as de Hamel explains:

Anxious believers can be enormously reassured by the almost exact similarity between even the earliest of the biblical papyri from Egypt and the text as it has survived during its descent through countless scriptoria and printing shops of Europe. . . .No significant variations or deliberate falsifications have ever been found to shake public confidence in the Bible as a whole.

While not delegitimating Joseph Smith’s famous statement about “designing priests and corrupt scribes” or the Book of Mormon’s note that many “plain and precious” parts were removed, it does call the Saints to carefully consider what might have changed–and when.

(3) One cannot so much as flip through this book without being in awe of the efforts that were put into not only transmitting the Bible, but making it a work of beauty. I wonder if there is room for any such thing in the LDS Church. I only know of a few efforts to go beyond the standard-issue scriptures of the Church (see here and here) and both leave a lot to be desired. Should there be an illuminated Book of Mormon? Would it be of any worth to the Saints? How else might art and scripture merge?

You have to admire De Hamel, who spent a quarter century as head of the Western Manuscripts department at Sotheby’s in London, for taking on a project so huge that it is beyond the purview of any one scholar. While it is perhaps unfair, then, to expect him to have mastered all of the relevant literature on 3000 years of Bible transmission, I do note that on the one point where I feel competent to evaluate his work, he’s off the mark. Here’s de Hamel discussing a manuscript of the Gospels found in the early twentieth century:

The text of Saint Mark includes one verse not apparently recorded elsewhere. Between Mark 16:14 and 16:15, Christ adds a statement that the reign of the Devil is over and that fearful things are about to happen to those sinners whom Christ came to save, and for whom he has prepared spiritual and incorruptible glory in heaven. The style and context of the verse suggests the real possibility that this may indeed be an authentic lost sentence from the Gospel.

The problem here is that most scholars regard Mark 16:8 as the original ending of the Gospel, with Mark 16:9-20 as a later addition. This makes the contention that his newfound verse is original rather problematic. (Perhaps de Hamel meant that it was an original verse, once found elsewhere in the manuscript. But that isn’t the plain sense of his words.)

Aside from that slight slip and the ocassional dry passage, this is a wonderful book. I recommend the text for anyone who wants to know how we ended up with fifteen hundred pages in fake leather and I recommend the illustrations for everyone.

Cross-posted at Times and Seasons.

An American Life by Ronald Reagan

I really wanted a biography, not an autobiography, of Reagan, but I couldn't find one. I did enjoy reading this. All of those phrases from my childhood--Iran-Contra, Grenada, Lebanan, Achille Lauro, sandinistas, arms-for-hostages, the Faukland Islands--now have some meaning. Of course, I realize that I only got Reagan's side. And while I did enjoy this, he doesn't get very many points for self-reflection; this autobio is much more 'journalistic' in tone. And a better editor would have cut the lengthy back-and-forth missives between him and Soviet leaders: they were boring. Slightly recommended.