front cover of Heart Petals
Heart Petals
The Personal Correspondence of David Oman McKay to Emma Ray McKay
Mary Jane Woodger
University of Utah Press, 2005
12 June 1906
Love feeds and grows on love, and while it grows, it increases the capacity of the soul for loving. So our love was perfect when I kissed you at the altar; it is perfect to-day; it will be perfect when the century strikes ‘half-past;’ it will be perfect eternally. - from the book
David O. McKay served as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1951 until his death in 1970. A devout and devoted leader, he was no less devoted to his beloved wife, Emma Ray McKay. In this collection of letters from the David Oman McKay Papers at the J. Willard Marriott Library of the University of Utah, McKay’s courtship of Emma Ray Riggs and the early days of the couple’s marriage are revealed in his own words.
The McKays were married in the Salt Lake Latter-day Saints Temple on January 2, 1901, the first “sealing” of the twentieth century. They became known as the church’s happiest couple. One of the things that cultivated that happiness were the poems and expressions of endearment McKay presented his wife, offerings he referred to as 'heart petals'. The letters collected here are replete with touching examples of those gifts of love.
Throughout this correspondence, McKay reveals his innermost feelings, joys, heartaches, and determinations, imparting a wealth of insights into his personal, caring nature and documenting his growth from a young, inexperienced missionary to a mature leader within the LDS Church. But most striking of all in these letters is the blossoming of a true, devoted love that lasted over seventy years.
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front cover of Hitler’s Shadow Empire
Hitler’s Shadow Empire
Nazi Economics and the Spanish Civil War
Pierpaolo Barbieri
Harvard University Press, 2015

Pitting fascists and communists in a showdown for supremacy, the Spanish Civil War has long been seen as a grim dress rehearsal for World War II. Francisco Franco’s Nationalists prevailed with German and Italian military assistance—a clear instance, it seemed, of like-minded regimes joining forces in the fight against global Bolshevism. In Hitler’s Shadow Empire Pierpaolo Barbieri revises this standard account of Axis intervention in the Spanish Civil War, arguing that economic ambitions—not ideology—drove Hitler’s Iberian intervention. The Nazis hoped to establish an economic empire in Europe, and in Spain they tested the tactics intended for future subject territories.

“The Spanish Civil War is among the 20th-century military conflicts about which the most continues to be published…Hitler’s Shadow Empire is one of few recent studies offering fresh information, specifically describing German trade in the Franco-controlled zone. While it is typically assumed that Nazi Germany, like Stalinist Russia, became involved in the Spanish Civil War for ideological reasons, Pierpaolo Barbieri, an economic analyst, shows that the motives of the two main powers were quite different.
—Stephen Schwartz, Weekly Standard

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