Meridian Magazine :: History Bits: I Love History

I Love History — I Just Don't Like to Read
By Davis Bitton

How can people can claim to be lovers of history while at the same time steadfastly refusing to read books?

History, after all, is a reading subject. A true lover of history reads many books and articles. The dismal report that the average college graduate reads an average of only one book a year — hear it and weep — does not describe a true history student. To say you don’t like to read, or are unwilling to read, while claiming an interest in history makes about as much sense as to say you love English literature but just don’t like to read.

Well, maybe I exaggerate. What many people probably mean is that they are fond of history insofar as they know it and in the form they know it and in the ways it continues to pass before their consciousness. They may have gone through a seminary textbook, in the way that students do, in their teenage years. They enjoy pioneer villages, pageants, parades. They visit monuments and read the plaques. They like movies on historical subjects and perhaps have seen television series produced by Ken Burns or similar productions on Mormon history.

I called this approach the "ritualization of Mormon of history" in a book I wrote under that title, concluding that "most people will possess their history ritualistically or not possess it at all." These are not bad people, for heaven’s sake, and if that is the way they are able to appropriate their past, so be it. Everyone doesn’t have to be a professorial bookworm.

But for those who enjoy reading or wish to learn more about their past than superficial ritualism allows, what should they read? There is no official answer, and opinions will differ. It would be easy to list a hundred titles or fifty or thirty. Hoping to be inviting rather than intimidating, I offer the following brief list as a point of departure. Biographies are omitted — they are the topic for another column. I will mention categories and give examples within each.

1.       A good general history. The Story of the Latter-day Saints by James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, will serve most readers well. (Some may like the more topical approach of Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton in The Mormon Experience.) At some point, if you haven’t done so, you will want to read B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church. Don’t be frightened by its six large volumes. The margins are wide, the print easy to read, and, for all his limitations, Roberts plowed through many primary sources and had a way of keeping the story moving.

2.       The history of a period within the larger general story. To have the experience of going into greater depth on a segment of history, anyone would be well rewarded by reading Glen M. Leonard’s Nauvoo:
A Place of Peace, a People of Promise. Ideally, of course, one reads a volume on the New York period, the Ohio period, the Missouri period, and so on across the generations of time down to the present, insofar as such in-depth studies are available.

3.       A history of the pioneer trek across the plains. No one, I think, should miss reading Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of
Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail. But the thing to read now, it seems to me, is Richard E. Bennett, We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus 1846-1848. A richly satisfying volume covering the same subject through the eyes of participants is Carol Cornall Madsen, Journey to Zion: Voices from the Mormon Trail.

4.       Something on immigration. The single book one should read here, in my view, is William Mulder, Homeward to Zion: The Mormon Migration from Scandinavia.

5.       An economic history. In a class by itself is Leonard J. Arrington’s Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints. It does not pretend to include everything, but what it does include is well documented, thoroughly digested, and fundamental to understanding.

6.       A compilation of primary sources. Never surpassed in my view is William Mulder and A. Russell Mortensen, eds., Among the Mormons: Historic Accounts by Contemporary Observers.

But for early Mormon history, down to the death of the Prophet Joseph Smith and carrying on into the beginning of the exodus, let us not forget the misleadingly titled work Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in seven volumes. Actually, this work is not by Joseph Smith although it contains letters and reports of sermons by him. The first-person narrative, which seems to be the voice of the Prophet, is a contrived re-creation in which diaries of other participants and additional material were drawn from and revised by clerks so as to make it appear that Joseph was telling the story himself.

This curious procedure, strictly a no-no according to current standards of editing, was used in other compilations by nineteenth-century editors. The fact remains that this work, long known unofficially as "the documentary history of the Church," is full of primary sources such as letters and sermons and affidavits, and for the period down to 1846 provides a detailed narrative, almost day by day.

7.       A history of the Church outside the United States. As more than half of Church members now reside outside the U.S., the student of history will want to acquire a sense of at least one such country or area. Eastern Europe, Africa, Central and South America are all extremely important, and there are books that treat part of their history.

For Mexico, a history well over a century old with fascinating twists and turns, the place to start is Lamond Tullis, Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture. For the Pacific islands and countries in the Far East our stalwart, reliable guide is R. Lanier Britsch, author of Unto the Isles of the Sea: A History of the Latter-day Saints in the Pacific and From the East: The History of the Latter-day Saints in Asia, 1851-1996.

Let’s stop there. One cannot, I think, claim to be well read in Mormon history without having read all, or most, of the titles here listed.

I can hear the critics now — why didn’t you include such and such? Yes, I know there are other works of equal importance, and the list could be expanded. Remember that I am speaking to the person who is open to doing some reading and just needs a little preliminary guidance. Once he or she has finished this short list, he will wish to continue.

Those who are turned on by the subject, those who became history "buffs," will find many further suggestions in the bibliography at the back of Story of the Latter-day Saints or, even more comprehensively, in the reference volume entitled Studies in Mormon History 1830-1997 assembled by the indefatigable James B. Allen, Ronald W. Walker, and David J. Whittaker.

My suggested preliminary reading list may seem forbidding. But as everyone knows, all you have to do is read one book at a time, a chapter at a time. Even a slow reader will finish this suggested reading program in much less than a year. Finish one book, and start another. Some of these titles are in print and can be purchased. Others can be obtained from used book dealers. Others are in the libraries or on the GospeLink CD available from Deseret Book Company.

Happy reading.