PositiveThe Washington Independent Review of BooksRead this book for a straightforward discussion of Joseph Smith’s polygamy using several largely ignored primary sources. In it, author Benjamin E. Park also draws out the tensions of minority rights versus majority rule in an early American fledgling democracy. Using the Mormon experiment as a case study, he explores boundaries of race, gender, and whiteness. After the first two chapters, I could hardly bring myself to put it down ... The author is an assistant professor of American history at Sam Houston State University, with a rich background in Mormon history. He engages with groundbreaking research on two fronts. First, he writes the neglected and forgotten stories of several other demographics in addition to the white men who normally center in Mormon histories ... This careful attention situates Mormons within the holistic context of native populations, Black men and women, and people of color in general, and reveals more salacious details of women’s experiences. The result is a dramatic reshaping of the motivations and impulses of the white men who’ve previously silenced or skirted these other narratives ... Secondly, he draws on a new source in the Council of Fifty meeting minutes which have only relatively recently been released by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints archive. These new sources alter the historical narrative, which, until now, has largely been a history of Mormon victimhood. Park’s history is a much more honest account ... The early chapters of Kingdom of Nauvoo introduce prominent characters a couple times and may be familiar to Mormon readers. Then, the narrative explodes with episodes of polygamy and kingdom-building that the average Mormon might not know about Park also avoids a typical Mormon trope about why people were drawn to the movement in the first place, an approach that feels fresh and original. However, there were times when I wanted a little more discussion about why people voluntarily joined such a controversial movement. It would humanize the larger body of Mormons not fully aware of these secret activities ... In other words, the book places the kingdom vis-à-vis Joseph Smith without addressing much of what a general Mormon settler, outside of Smith’s inner circle, might be experiencing or not experiencing in parallel. Again, that story has been told elsewhere. It is refreshing to read an historical account from the perspective of Smith’s inner circle that examines its more shocking behaviors. Be aware of the perspective Park is taking ... an important and riveting read about a largely white minority testing traditional systems of power. It is also a fascinating case study of a man who tried to reset the boundaries of sexual propriety — including who participated and who wavered — and of what the primary sources reveal about the motivations of those involved.
David Eimar
MixedThe Washington Independent Review of BooksAt times, [Eimer\'s] take feels like the trope of a white man Orientalizing an Asian country ... these types of comparisons represent the detachment of a colonial gaze. Yet Eimer takes care to acknowledge the destructive colonial legacy ... Eimer’s work is a gauge for how Europeans and North Americans might experience the country, how they might be received, and what they should know. The downside to his narrative is that it focuses almost completely on men’s issues ... Adding a broader sense of women’s experiences in the country may have given the book more depth as Aung San Suu Kyi takes such a prominent role in it. To be fair, as a foreign man, the author may not have had access to enough women to bring out that perspective ... makes a contribution to the literature on Burma, offering an outsider’s understanding of this often confusing, always fascinating country.
