Item Detail
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7805
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7
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4
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English
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Some Thoughts Regarding an Unwritten History of Nauvoo
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BYU Studies
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Summer 1975
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15
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417-24
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"A recent reading of my Nauvoo bibliography disclosed that at least sixty books have been written dealing wholly or in part with some aspect of the Mormon experience in that city. But these scores of articles on the subject increase our knowledge of only the major events in this "Kingdom on the Mississippi." Few, if any, major works have treated "early Mormon lifestyles, or the Saints as human beings," to use Davis Bitton's phrase. Christopher Lasch, in his book, Reflection on American History, has severely chastised Mormon historians for "detaching the subject from its surroundings," and for failing to clearly illuminate what gave Mormonism its vitality. I suspect that the illumination will not be forthcoming until historians devote more time to studying the letters, diaries, and journals of the common Latter-day Saints who lived--and very often died--in Nauvoo." [Publisher's abstract]