Of a piece with Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven (2003), though without its drama—serviceable, but really a...
Roberts (Sandstone Spine: Seeking the Anasazi on the First Traverse of the Comb Ridge, 2005, etc.) elaborates on a footnote to the history of westward expansion, excoriating the early leaders of Mormonism in the bargain.
Those leaders already have much to answer for, as Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History (1945) and Sally Denton’s American Massacre (2003) demonstrate. Roberts adds to the charges with this study of the handcart migration of 1856, an experiment that ended in tragedy. It involved mostly European immigrants recruited abroad for settlement in “Deseret,” the great Mormon territory twice the size of Texas, which speaks, in Roberts’s formulation, to “the grandiosity of Mormon ambitions.” Lacking the Conestoga wagons of earlier immigrants, which Mormon leader Brigham Young said the church could not afford, they had to traverse the 1,300 miles from Iowa to Utah, across prairies and mountains, using two-wheeled carts. As Roberts recounts, about 3,000 immigrants made the trek, the last contingents of them, numbering about 1,000, leaving late in the summer. Caught in early snowstorms in the Wyoming Rockies and worn down by the journey, some 220 died. By Roberts’s account, Young had received warning that the late-leaving parties were courting disaster, and, he writes, “The Prophet seems to have forgotten that in 1847 it had taken his hand-picked pioneer party, nearly all of whom were men in the prime of life, 108 days to travel from Winter Quarters [Nebraska] to the Great Salt Lake, over a trail three hundred miles shorter than the one the handcart pioneers would be required to traverse.” Following the deaths, others within the Mormon hierarchy were scapegoated. Roberts’s account is solid, but he oversimplifies in order to blame Young. Other historians, such as Leonard Arrington and Bernard DeVoto, have shown that there were many causes at work, including poor communications and the newly converted immigrants’ zeal to get to the promised land.
Of a piece with Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven (2003), though without its drama—serviceable, but really a magazine article plumped up to book length.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3988-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2008
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The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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