Contributors in the first section discuss foundational issues such as the Book of Mormon’s moral psychology, its minimalist and covenantal moralities, the nature of the good and how the good is known, the question of whether value depends on a certain kind of future, the Book of Mormon's strategy for moral persuasion, and God’s participation in human choices. In the second section, the essayists turn to everyday ethical questions concerning resistance to forced cultural assimilation, clothing and dress, authority, and memory. The final chapter further explores practical moral visions.
A rich and thought-provoking analysis, Moral Visions examines the Book of Mormon through a variety of methods while aiming to deepen understanding of both the text’s messages and its potential place in future discussions of ethics. Contributors: Daniel Becerra, Courtney S. Campbell, Ryan Davis, Michael D. K. Ing, Ariel Bybee Laughton, Kimberly Matheson, Rachel Esplin Odell, Kelly Sorensen, Joseph M. Spencer
In TheMorality of Everyday Life, Thomas Fleming offers an alternative to the enlightened liberalism espoused by thinkers as different as Kant, Mill, Rand, and Rawls. Philosophers in the liberal tradition, although they disagree on many important questions, agree that moral and political problems should be looked at from an objective point of view and a decision made from a rational perspective that is universally applied to all comparable cases.
Fleming instead places importance on the particular, the local, and moral complexity. He advocates a return to premodern traditions, such as those exemplified in the texts of Aristotle, the Talmud, and the folk wisdom in ancient Greek literature, for a solution to ethical predicaments. In his view, liberalism and postmodernism ignore the fact that human beings by their very nature refuse to live in a world of universal abstractions.
While such modern philosophers as Kant and Kohlberg have regarded a mother’s self-sacrificing love for her children as beneath their level of morality, folk wisdom tells us it is nearly the highest morality, taking precedence over the duties of citizenship or the claims of humanity. Fleming believes that a modern type of “casuistry” should be applied to these moral conflicts in which the line between right and wrong is rarely clear.
This volume will appeal to students of ethics and classics, as well as the general educated reader, who will appreciate Fleming’s jargon-free prose. Teachers will find this text useful because each chapter is a self-contained essay that could be used as the basis for classroom discussion.
Fr. Servais Pinckaers’s work is well on its way to being accepted as the work on Catholic moral thinking for the coming generation of laymen and students. Pinckaers sharply distinguishes this view of morality from modern “moralities of obligation,” which regard the moral life primarily as obedience to rules that limit human freedom and curb human desires. Pinckaers sees moralities of obligation as the logical outcome of a new understanding of human freedom. Instead of regarding freedom as the capacity to engage in excellent acts of virtue (freedom for excellence), the modern view understands freedom as the radical ability to do good or evil indifferently (freedom of indifference). Pinckaers argues convincingly that this view of freedom and the morality of obligation that flows from it have impoverished the Catholic understanding of the moral life. This work offers the reader a compelling itinerary of moral development, rooted in the theology of St. Paul and the morality of the Gospels.
Now, for a new generation of students, the book is made available in an ebook version.
In addition, under the direction of Fr. Michael Sherwin, a teacher’s edition of the work is to be published, which will greatly aid the teacher in high school or home school to help his or her students to gain the most from this seminal work.
“As Alasdair MacIntyre notes in the preface, the work of Pinckaers attracted strong and fully justified notice in this country with the publication in English of his The Sources of Christian Ethics. As Pinckaers himself notes in the text, excellently translated by Michael Sherwin, the interest should in no way be limited to Roman Catholics. Morality recasts the earlier book in an argument that is both lower and upper case ‘catholic,’ and is accessible to readers and teachers outside the limited circle of moral theologians and academic ethicists. Pinckaers contends that Christian morality is not first of all about obligations but about happiness, understanding that the happiness of union with God is our natural destiny made possible by grace. The Sermon on the Mount is at the center of an approach to morality that turns on the distinction between ‘freedom for excellence’ and ‘freedom of indifference,’ the former understood as human flourishing and the latter as a ‘neutral’ capacity to choose between controversies. The proposal of Morality is thoroughly Christ-centered, humanistic, and faithful to the magisterial teaching of the Church. Warmly recommended.” - First Things
“If you want to have the experience of reflecting on Catholic morality as though you were reading about it for the first time, treat yourself to Father Servais Pinckaers’ Morality: The Catholic View. He has recovered the classical view of the moral life as the quest for happiness and has presented it with disarming simplicity. Bringing us back to the Sermon on the Mount and Romans 12–15, the writings of Augustine and Aquinas, and the theme of natural law, he has freed those texts from the layers of legalism which has hidden their liberating, spiritual powers for moral living. By distinguishing freedom of indifference from freedom for excellence, he has restored a wise vision of freedom. No one has shown better the role of virtues as building blocks for morality. Catechists need to read this book.” Rev. Alfred McBride, O.Praem., Professor of Homilectics and Catechetics at Blessed Pope John XXIII Seminary, Weston, Massachusetts
“Father Pinckaers has given us a masterful exposition of Christian living. The clarity and brevity of his presentation – captured well by the translator – make this book ideal for classroom and parish use. “Readers will find the historical and systematic observations very informative.” Romanus Cessario, St. John’s Seminary, Brighton, Massachusetts
Traces the comorbidity of eating disorders and drug addiction in nineteenth-century British literature and culture, as a product of and contributor to colonial expansion.
Morbid Cravings is the first book to examine how eating disorders and drug addiction developed in the nineteenth century as comorbid, psychosocial responses to imperial-driven cultural demands that Britons regulate their appetites. Through close readings of Jane Austen, Thomas De Quincey, Sydney Whiting, and Arthur Conan Doyle, Hannah Markley explores the comorbidity of these disorders in relation to imperial trade and colonial conquest, applying a postcolonial lens to show us how emerging, separate diagnostic categories were in fact structured by the same social and economic systems.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the influx of sugar, tea, coffee, opium, chocolate, and tobacco began to transform British diets and nervous systems, creating dependence on not only these substances but on the colonial systems that delivered them. In turn, medicine attempted to curtail these appetites by promoting restrictive dietary practices. By focusing on how anorexia nervosa, opium-eating, dyspepsia, and compulsive injection emerged in relation to attempts to regulate British appetites for colonial substances, Markley argues that the medico-ideological imperative to restrict appetites produced interrelated representations of eating disorders and addictions that ultimately enacted the voracious logic of British racial capitalism.
Collecting the interpretations of outstanding writers on the literature and history of modern Britain, this book deals with a rich variety of themes, some familiar, many unexpected, taking the reader on a highly engaging excursion through British life and intellectual biography. The scope includes not only the personalities, politics, and culture of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, but also the interaction of British and other societies throughout the world.
Building on rigorous research by the world-renowned Glasgow University Media Group, More Bad News From Israel examines media coverage of the current conflict in the Middle East and the impact it has on public opinion.
The book brings together senior journalists and ordinary viewers to examine how audiences understand the news and how their views are shaped by media reporting. In the largest study ever undertaken in this area, the authors focus on television news. They illustrate major differences in the way Israelis and Palestinians are represented, including how casualties are shown and the presentation of the motives and rationales of both sides. They combine this with extensive audience research involving hundreds of participants from the USA, Britain and Germany. It shows extraordinary differences in levels of knowledge and understanding, especially amongst young people from these countries.
Covering recent developments, including the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, this authoritative and up-to-date study will be an invaluable tool for journalists, activists and students and researchers of media studies.
2022 Art in Service to the Environment Award, Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter
Honorable Mention, 2022 Nonfiction Prize, Writers' League of Texas
Writers explore a city’s relationship with chronic catastrophic flooding.
Shortly after Hurricane Harvey dumped a record 61 inches of rain on Houston in 2017, celebrated writer and Bayou City resident Lacy M. Johnson began collecting flood stories. Although these stories attested to the infinite variety of experience in America’s most diverse city, they also pointed to a consistent question: What does catastrophic flooding reveal about this city, and what does it obscure?
More City than Water brings together essays, conversations, and personal narratives from climate scientists, marine ecologists, housing activists, urban planners, artists, poets, and historians as they reflect on the human geography of a region increasingly defined by flooding. Both a literary and a cartographic anthology, More City than Water features striking maps of Houston’s floodplains, waterways, drainage systems, reservoirs, and inundated neighborhoods. Designed by University of Houston seniors from the Graphic Design program, each map, imaginative and precise, shifts our understanding of the flooding, the public’s relationship to it, and the fraught reality of rebuilding. Evocative and unique, this is an atlas that uncovers the changing nature of living where the waters rise.
From precocious sportswriter to Federal Prisoner #01150-134: The intersection of sports and the revolutionary 1970s, with one ambitious young man caught in the middle
Jay Weiner was an aspiring teenage sportswriter when he met Jack Scott, the charismatic, activist journalist who would become his mentor, immersing him in the political and social issues roiling sports—and so much else—in the late 1960s and 1970s. Weiner became a zealous student of Scott, joining a new tradition of sports journalism that interrogated questions of race, power, and politics alongside the games themselves. But his blind devotion took a treacherous turn when Scott took Weiner, as a surprise for his twentieth birthday, to a secluded Pennsylvania farmhouse where heiress-turned-FBI-most-wanted Patty Hearst was hiding out with her Symbionese Liberation Army kidnappers-turned-comrades.
A More Dangerous Game is Weiner’s story of coming of age in a shocking fashion. A wild mosaic of sports, journalism, betrayal, justice, courage, and redemption, his memoir charts the meeting of sports and the radical left in the 1970s, with Weiner unwittingly caught in the middle and left behind by his mentor. In the engaged, edgy style of a seasoned sportswriter, Weiner describes the fallout after that fateful encounter with the country’s most wanted fugitives: three years of federal subpoenas, impossible decisions, and, ultimately, four months in prison for refusing to testify before a grand jury.
With exhaustive background reporting, Weiner fits together the seemingly disparate pieces of his unlikely journey from young sportswriter to frightened FBI target to emboldened Federal Prisoner #01150-134. From its examination of the life and work of Jack Scott to its surprising angle on the well-chronicled saga of Patty Hearst, A More Dangerous Game is the engrossing story of a time when examining sports as a mirror of society put a writer on the cutting edge of one of the most notorious stories of a generation.
Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.
An Essential Book for Runners of All Abilities
All of the Author’s Proceeds Go to Shoes4Africa to Support the Construction of Children’s Hospitals in Kenya
Kenya has produced the greatest concentration of world-class runners, and fellow athletes have long been intrigued by their remarkable success. Toby Tanser has devoted much of his professional career living and training among Kenyan runners in order to better understand the unique status of East African athletes. In More Fire: How to Run the Kenyan Way, the author builds upon the success of his acclaimed Train Hard, Win Easy, the first book to provide insights into the Kenyan "magic" that so many runners and coaches had sought. Instead of special foods or secret techniques, Tanser found that Kenyan runners simply trained incredibly hard, much harder than anyone had realized. By adapting their training regime—which includes three workouts a day—and following their example, runners, whether novices or champions, are able to improve both their performance and enjoyment in running. For those training for a marathon or any other distance race, this book is both practical and inspirational.
Divided into four parts, the book begins with a description of running in Kenya, the landscape, the physical conditions, and the people; the second part concentrates on details of Kenyan training camps, training methods, and their typical training diet; the third profiles individual runners and coaches from the past and present, with each explaining their approach to running so that readers can gain further insight into their methods. The book ends with a discussion on how the reader can adapt Kenyan training practices for their own running requirements. More Fire: How to Run the Kenyan Way is essential reading for runners of all levels and experience.
In More God, Less Crime renowned criminologist Byron R. Johnson proves that religion can be a powerful antidote to crime. The book describes how faith communities, congregations, and faith-based organizations are essential in forming partnerships necessary to provide the human and spiritual capital to effectively address crime, offender rehabilitation, and the substantial aftercare problems facing former prisoners. There is scattered research literature on religion and crime but until now, there has never been one publication that systematically and rigorously analyzes what we know from this largely overlooked body of research in a lay-friendly format. The data shows that when compared to current strategies, faith-based approaches to crime prevention bring added value in targeting those factors known to cause crime: poverty, lack of education, and unemployment. In an age of limited fiscal resources, Americans can’t afford a criminal justice system that turns its nose up at volunteer efforts that could not only work better than the abysmal status quo, but also save billions of dollars at the same time. This book provides readers with practical insights and recommendations for a faith-based response that could do just that.
On its initial publication in 1998, John R. Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime drew both lavish praise and heated criticism. More than a decade later, it continues to play a key role in ongoing arguments over gun-control laws: despite all the attacks by gun-control advocates, no one has ever been able to refute Lott’s simple, startling conclusion that more guns mean less crime. Relying on the most rigorously comprehensive data analysis ever conducted on crime statistics and right-to-carry laws, the book directly challenges common perceptions about the relationship of guns, crime, and violence. For this third edition, Lott draws on an additional ten years of data—including provocative analysis of the effects of gun bans in Chicago and Washington, D.C—that brings the book fully up to date and further bolsters its central contention.
More Nights Than Days is a unique exploration of the experience of children who survived the Holocaust—including Roma and Sinti victims—and the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Children are among the principal victims of armed conflicts and slaughters; nonetheless, they perceive events through the prism of their unique perspective and have a range of coping techniques adults don't possess.
This overview of writings of ninety-one child survivors bears evidence from a wide range of human ruthlessness. The author presents little-known texts along with famous memoirs and autobiographical fiction, with abundant quotations. Many of these are not only compelling as historical testimony, but poetic and stirringly expressive. Yudit Kiss has not written a historical study or literary criticism of the children’s books. She explores, instead, what the authors went through and what they felt and understood about their experience. An accessible and captivating reading, this volume presents a close-up, human size dimension of the destruction. The books written by child survivors also describe the resources and means that helped them to remain human even in the deepest well of inhumanity, offering precious lessons about resistance and resilience.M
Reviewing the first volume of Opera Scenes for Class and Stage, Walter Ducloux wrote in the Opera Journal: "If you can come up, within five seconds, with an operatic excerpt involving two sopranos, four mezzo-sopranos, two tenors, and a bass, you don't need this book. Otherwise hurry and buy it. I keep it on my night table."
In More Opera Scenes, the Wallaces have reviewed 100 additional operas and have chosen over 700 scenes. The popular "Table of Voice Categories" providing more than 300 combinations is also featured in this volume.
The remarkable economic growth of Las Vegas between 1980 and 2007 created a population boom and a major increase in the ethnic and religious diversity of the city. Today, over 21 percent of the city’s population is foreign born, and over 30 percent speak a language other than English at home. The local court system offers interpreters in 82 languages, and in 2005/2006, for example, more than 11,000 people, originating from 138 countries, were naturalized there as American citizens.More Peoples of Las Vegas extends the survey of this city’s cosmopolitan population begun in The Peoples of Las Vegas (University of Nevada Press, 2005). As in the previous book, this volume includes well-established groups like the Irish and Germans, and recently arrived groups like the Ethiopians and Guatemalans. Essays describe the history of each group in Las Vegas and the roles they play in the life and economy of the city. The essays also explore the influence of modern telecommunications and accessible air travel, showing how these factors allow newcomers to create transnational identities and maintain ties with families and culture back home. They also examine the role of local institutions—including clubs, religious organizations, shops, restaurants, and newspapers and other media—in helping immigrants maintain their ethnic and religious identities and in disseminating national and even regional cultures of origin.More Peoples of Las Vegas adds to our awareness of the rich and varied ethnic and religious character of Las Vegans. In a broader context, it offers thoughtful perspectives on the impact of globalization on a major American city and on the realities of immigrant life in the twenty-first century.
How discipline and conscience displaced anger and reputation in the early US Navy’s crucible of leadership
More Real Courage: Transforming Honor at the Early Naval Academy is a work of narrative history that traces a hard-fought moral transformation within the United States Navy’s officer corps. Samuel J. Limneos reveals an institutional struggle between competing ideals of courage, as traditional notions of offense, reputation, and aggression collided with emerging values of restraint, loyalty, and duty. Through intensely human stories of conflict, discipline, and conscience, the book shows how honor was contested, defended, and ultimately reshaped into a standard grounded in moral courage and professional responsibility.
Set across three pivotal decades at the Naval Academy, the study examines how midshipmen learned to navigate a culture inherited from European martial traditions while serving a rapidly changing republic. Limneos illuminates the professionalization of naval officers during the mid-nineteenth century, demonstrating how commitment, longsuffering, and performance of duty gradually displaced volatile codes of personal honor. Bridging social, cultural, and institutional history, More Real Courage fills a significant gap in naval historiography and speaks directly to enduring debates over character, leadership, and education in the armed forces. The book offers enduring moral lessons for naval historians, military professionals, and readers seeking to understand how national character is forged amid conflict, reform, and cultural change.
Mark Sidel is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Iowa and a research scholar at the University's Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.
On a daily basis we are confronted with "more speech, not less"—more news reports, more television channels, more publications, more electronic communications. Communications laws have expanded in response to the proliferation of communications, and these laws affect everyone.
Communications lawyer Mark Sableman uses recent case studies, practical examples, and plain language to describe and analyze the broad spectrum of modern communications laws and policies. In these essays, Sableman helps communications professionals as well as informed citizens understand the law.
The constitutional foundation for the information age is settled: radical solutions on either side have been rejected. Neither First Amendment absolutism nor untrammeled content-based censorship will rule in America. But within the remaining middle area, many key policy choices are being made by courts and policy makers. Intricate webs of legal do’s and don’ts, practical pitfalls, and effective safe harbors are being developed across the broad spectrum of communications law.
In this guide to existing law, developing trends, and critical policy determinations, Sableman discusses privacy, Internet communications and policy, censorship, libel and slander, copyright and intellectual property, advertising, broadcasting, and journalistic confidentiality. Through actual cases and practical examples, he examines and explains both the existing rules for communications professionals and the developing policies that deserve the attention and scrutiny of informed citizens. Sableman approaches these subjects as a practicing lawyer experienced in both business and media communications.
The phrase "more speech, not less" describes not only the growing cacophony of the information age, but also one approach to legal policy—Justice Louis D. Brandeis’s preference for "more speech, not enforced silence" in all but the most extreme situations. Drawing from his strong advocacy of free speech, Sableman hopes to stimulate informed debate among all who are concerned about the power of information and the magic of words and images.
More Tales of a Low-Rent Birder brings together twenty-five essays that originally appeared in major birding publications. In these pieces, Pete Dunne ranges from wildly humorous to sadly elegiac, as he describes everything from the "field plumage" of the dedicated birder to the lingering death of an accidentally injured golden plover. Running like a thread through all the essays is Dunne's love and respect for the birds he watches, his concern over human threats to their survival, and his tolerance, even affection, for the human "odd birds" that birding attracts. Truly, these essays offer something for everyone interested in birds and the natural habitats our species share.
Anyone who has sat at the "Vet," watched a pick-up game, or played catch in the yard, knows that sports is more than a game in Philadelphia—it's a commitment to hard work, a belief in community values, and a tradition of never giving up.
Told through the personal experiences of professional athletes, community leaders, and everyday players, More Than a Game captures how sports build character and communities with each hit of the ball, catch of a touchdown pass, or dunk of the basketball.
Among those featured are Carlos Ruiz, Chris Pronger, Sonny Hill, Angelo Cataldi, Leonard Weaver, Rita Sloan Green, Ruben Amaro, Jr., Joe Banner, Alyson Goodner, Gary Cobb, Jim Ellis, Mayor Michael Nutter, Nicholas Bradley, Governor Edward Rendell, and Rami Ibrahim.
The perfect gift for the aspiring athlete, the community coach, or the supportive parent.
New England politics can, at first blush, appear monochromatic. After all, only one member of the entire region’s delegation to the US Congress is a Republican, and citizens have elected few Republicans to the US House or Senate in the last decade. But this has not always been the case. In 1948, only two states in the region–Rhode Island and Connecticut–had Democratic senators. Yet a closer examination of the region today reveals fascinating political variation. Liberal policies, greater diversity, and engaged political movements are reshaping stereotypical Yankee tendencies of close-fisted government, whiteness, and laconic discourse.
This collection of new essays captures both the political history and contemporary moment in this region and exposes the surprisingly varied political landscape. It examines historical shifts, regional developments, and the politics of its states to argue that New England has been and continues to be an important part of the national political puzzle, from demonstrating democratic principles in early America to producing major contemporary figures such as Elizabeth Warren, Ayanna Pressley, and Susan Collins. The political shifts at work in New England mirror the South’s transformation, but have received much less attention. This volume corrects that omission by profiling political movements and candidates, political rhetoric from activists to pundits, and demographics and voting in each state as well as the region as a whole.
In addition to material by the editors, this important collection includes contributions from Rachael V. Cobb, Jerold Duquette, Christopher J. Galdieri, Jane JaKyung Han, Douglas B. Harris, Luis Jiménez, Scott McLean, James Melcher, Maureen Moakley, Paul Petterson, and Dante J. Scala.
A powerful ethnographic portrait of hunger, dignity, and community in America.
In More than Bread: Ethnography of a Soup Kitchen, sociologist Irene Glasser presents a compelling and deeply human exploration of poverty, hunger, and community through the lens of an American soup kitchen. Drawing on immersive ethnographic research, Glasser moves beyond stereotypes and statistics to examine the daily experiences of individuals who depend on emergency food assistance, as well as the volunteers and staff who work to meet their needs.
Through firsthand observations and personal narratives, the book reveals the complex social relationships, challenges, and acts of resilience that unfold within this vital community institution. Glasser explores how issues such as homelessness, unemployment, inequality, mental health, and social isolation intersect in the lives of those seeking assistance, while also highlighting the dignity and humanity of people often overlooked in public discussions of poverty.
More than Bread invites readers to consider broader questions about social responsibility, public policy, and the effectiveness of charitable responses to human need. A valuable resource for understanding the realities of food insecurity in America, this book offers an informative and compassionate perspective on one of society's most pressing challenges. It is an essential read for students, scholars, social workers, policymakers, nonprofit professionals, and anyone interested in poverty, homelessness, and social justice.
Using personal experience and narrative, as well as the voices of students, trainees, and academic colleagues, this book illustrates how an initiative beginning over thirty years ago to train obstetrician-gynecologists in Ghana can serve as a model for global engagement by universities and learners at many levels. In addition to detailing a proven sustainable model for global health programs, this book highlights the ethical and moral imperatives participants should expect and demand of truly engaged academic global health.
Explores the Muslim-Jewish relationship through music in Algeria and its diaspora.
Today, more than six decades after the departure of Jews from Algeria to France at the moment of decolonization, music remains a compelling site for remembering Muslim-Jewish intimacy before the moment of rupture. In this way, music works against dominant discourses of Muslim-Jewish conflict and Jewish outsider status, instead presenting music as a sign of Muslim-Jewish brotherhood and of Jewish rootedness in North Africa. Yet digging deeper into the lived past and its relation to contemporary memory uncovers the fragility of brotherhood as well as competing ways to read Muslim-Jewish intimacy around music, some of which edge into rivalry, hierarchy, and difference. In More than Friends, Jonathan Glasser draws on historical archives and ethnographic research in Algeria and in France to weigh these multiple interpretations of the Muslim-Jewish past, ultimately offering an alternative, more resilient way of imagining what it means to be intimate through music.
Sign language interpreters often offer the primary avenue of access for deaf and hard of hearing students in public schools. More than 80% of all deaf children today are mainstreamed, and few of their teachers sign well enough to provide them with full access. As a result, many K-12 interpreters perform multiple roles beyond interpreting. Yet, very little is known about what they actually do and what factors inform their moment-to-moment decisions. This volume presents the range of activities and responsibilities performed by educational interpreters, and illuminates what they consider when making decisions.
To learn about the roles of K-12 interpreters, author Melissa B. Smith conducted in-depth analyses at three different schools. She learned that in response to what interpreters feel that their deaf students need, many focus on three key areas: 1) visual access, 2) language and learning, and 3) social and academic participation/inclusion. To best serve their deaf students in these contexts, they perform five critical functions: they assess and respond to the needs and abilities of deaf students; they interpret with or without modification as they deem appropriate; they capitalize on available resources; they rely on interactions with teachers and students to inform their choices; and they take on additional responsibilities as the need arises.
From 1915 to 1971 the large U.S. Steel plant was a major part of Duluth’s landscape and life. Just as important was Morgan Park—an innovatively planned and close-knit community constructed for the plant’s employees and their families. In this new book Arnold R. Alanen brings to life Morgan Park, the formerly company-controlled town that now stands as a city neighborhood, and the U.S. Steel plant for which it was built.
Planned by renowned landscape architects, architects, and engineers, and provided with schools, churches, and recreational and medical services by U.S. Steel, Morgan Park is an iconic example—like Lowell, Massachusetts, and Pullman, Illinois—of a twentieth-century company town, as well as a window into northeastern Minnesota’s industrial roots.
Starting with the intense political debates that preceded U.S. Steel’s decision to build a plant in Duluth, Morgan Park follows the town and its residents through the boom years to the closing of the outmoded facility—an event that foreshadowed industrial shutdowns elsewhere in the United States—and up to today, as current residents work to preserve the community’s historic character.
Through compelling archival and contemporary photographs and vibrant stories of a community built of concrete and strong as steel, Alanen shows the impact both the plant and Morgan Park have had on life in Duluth.
Arnold R. Alanen is professor of landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His previous books include Main Street Ready-Made: The New Deal Community of Greendale, Wisconsin and Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America.
"Romney’s unique vantage point is the strongest draw of this narrative: Romney and his family lived much of their life in the Mexican Mormon colonies. But the narrative’s value is much broader and deeper than just that. Romney’s insights into Mexican politics and personalities, and his view of the course of history from inside rather than from outside, are fascinating, colorful and opinionated. He was clear about who he admired and why, and who he did not."
—from the Foreword
In the 1880s, as a precondition to granting Utah statehood, the United States government enacted laws to put a stop to the Mormon practice of polygamy. Those who continued to practice this principle were forced underground as federal marshals roamed the territory searching for "polygs." In response, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints looked for safe places to send its members; many found refuge across the border in Mexico.
Unavailable since its original publication in 1938, this important document of a little-known chapter in Mormon history is now reprinted with a foreword by Martha Sonntag Bradley. Romney was raised and spent much of his life in the colonies, making this book a significant contribution to LDS history. It chronicles a new kind of Mormon pioneer facing the hardships of an unfamiliar land, a tenuous relationship with the government, and the necessary fortitude to hold fast to one’s belief in the face of difficulty and trial.
Winner of the Evans Biography Award, the Mormon History Association Best Book Award, and the John Whitmer Association (RLDS) Best Book Award.
Mormon Enigma is the bestselling biography of Emma Hale Smith, wife of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. It was Joseph Smith who announced that an angel of the Lord had commanded him to introduce a 'new order of marriage.' And it was Emma Hale Smith who confronted the practice of polygamy head on.
As the authors note in their introduction, "Early leaders in Utah castigated Emma from their pulpits for opposing Brigham Young and the practice of polygamy, and for lending support to the Reorganization. As these attitudes filtered down through the years, Emma was virtually written out of official Utah histories. In this biography, we have attempted to reconstruct the full story of this remarkable and much misunderstood woman's experiences.
Having risen from a Pennsylvania backcountry upbringing to become a respected member of the upper class, Bernhisel possessed a personal history that allowed him to reach common ground with politicians and other outsiders. He negotiated for Joseph Smith’s life and, after the Church’s relocation to the Utah Territory, took on the task of rehabilitating the public image of the Latter-day Saints. Brigham Young’s defiance of the government undermined Bernhisel’s work, but their close if sometimes turbulent relationship ultimately allowed Bernhisel to make peace with Washington, secure a presidential pardon for Young, and put Utah and the Latter-day Saints on the road to formally joining the United States.
But by interviewing former church aides, examining hundreds of diaries, and drawing from his own past experience as an insider within the Latter-day Saint historical department, D. Michael Quinn presents a fuller view. His extensive research documents how the governing apostles, seventies, and presiding bishops are likely to be at loggerheads, as much as united. These strong-willed, independent men–like directors of a large corporation or supreme court justices–lobby among their colleagues, forge alliances, out-maneuver opponents, and broker compromises.
There is more: clandestine political activities, investigative and punitive actions by church security forces, personal “loans” from church coffers (later written off as bad debts), and other privileged power-vested activities. Quinn considers the changing role and attitude of the leadership toward visionary experiences, the momentous events which have shaped quorum protocol and doctrine, and day-to-day bureaucratic intrigue from the time of Brigham Young to the dawn of the twenty-first century.
The hierarchy seems at root well-intentioned and even at times aggressive in fulfilling its stated responsibility, which is to expedite the Second Coming. Where they have become convinced that God has spoken, they have set aside personal differences, offered unqualified support, and spoken with a unified voice. This potential for change, when coupled with the tempering effect of competing viewpoints, is something Quinn finds encouraging about Mormonism. But one should not assume that these men are infallible or work in anything approaching uninterrupted unanimity.
Not until seven years later did Mormons first learn that authority had been restored by angels or of the need for a hierarchy mirroring the Pauline model. That same year (1835) a Quorum of Twelve Apostles was organized, but their jurisdiction was limited to areas outside established stakes (dioceses). Stakes were led by a president, who oversaw spiritual development, and by a bishop, who supervised temporal needs.
At Smith’s martyrdom in 1844, the church had five leading quorums of authority. The most obvious successor to Smith, Illinois stake president William Marks, opposed the secret rites of polygamy, anointing, endowments, and the clandestine political activity that had characterized the church in Illinois. The secret Council of Fifty had recently ordained Smith as King on Earth and sent ambassadors abroad to form alliances against the United States.
The majority of church members knew nothing of these developments, but they followed Brigham Young, head of the Quorum of the Twelve, who spoke forcefully and moved decisively to eliminate contenders for the presidency. He continued to build on Smith’s political and doctrinal innovations and social stratification. Young’s twentieth-century legacy is a well-defined structure without the charismatic spontaneity or egalitarian chaos of the early church.
Historian D. Michael Quinn examines the contradictions and confusion of the first two tumultuous decades of LDS history. He demonstrates how events and doctrines were silently, retroactively inserted into the published form of scriptures and records to smooth out the stormy, haphazard development. The bureaucratization of Mormonism was inevitable, but the manner in which it occurred was unpredictable and will be, for readers, fascinating.
Early in the twentieth century, it was possible for Latter-day Saints to have lifelong associations with businesses managed by their leaders or owned and controlled by the church itself. For example, one could purchase engagement rings from Daynes Jewelry, honeymoon at the Hotel Utah, and venture off on the Union Pacific Railroad, all partially owned and run by church apostles.
Families could buy clothes at Knight Woolen Mills. The husband might work at Big Indian Copper or Bullion-Beck, Gold Chain, or Iron King mining companies. The wife could shop at Utah Cereal Food and buy sugar supplied by Amalgamated or U and I Sugar, beef from Nevada Land and Livestock, and vegetables from the Growers Market. They might take their groceries home in parcels from Utah Bag Co. They probably read the Deseret News at home under a lamp plugged into a Utah Power and Light circuit. They could take out a loan from Zion’s Co-operative and insurance from Utah Home and Fire.
The apostles had a long history of community involvement in financial enterprises to the benefit of the general membership and their own economic advantage. This volume is the result of the author’s years of research into LDS financial dominance from 1830 to 2010.
Mormon Mavericks summarizes a few famous flashpoints in Mormon history; more importantly, it provides a telling study in human nature. Each contributor is an expert in his or her discipline, and all approach their topic with equal doses of sympathy and objectivity.
The following mavericks are featured in this collection of biographical essays:
Fawn McKay BrodieREADERS
Browse our collection.
PUBLISHERS
See BiblioVault's publisher services.
STUDENT SERVICES
Files for college accessibility offices.
UChicago Accessibility Resources
home | accessibility | search | about | contact us
BiblioVault ® 2001 - 2026
The University of Chicago Press
