Massacre at Mountain Meadows
Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, and Glen M. Leonard
Reviews and Awards
"A vivid, gripping narrative of one of the most notorious mass murders in all American history, and a model for how historians should do their work. This account of a long-controversial horror is scrupulously researched, enriched with contemporary illustrations, and informed by the lessons of more recent atrocities." --Daniel Walker Howe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848
"Three Mormon scholars have thoroughly researched one of the most shameful events in Mormon history. They have produced a very detailed, insightful and balanced account of the events leading to the Mountain Meadow Massacre of 9/11, 1857." --Robert V. Remini, Professor Emeritus of History and the Humanities, University of Illinois, Chicago
"An institutional effort at truth telling in service to reparation, this book provides in unflinching detail and with scholarly transparency the story of one of the West's most disturbingly violent moments. The authors tell the story well and get the history right, in no small part because of LDS Church sponsorship that underwrote a level of professional staffing and research that is impossible, even unimaginable, to the most diligent of lone writers. This uniquely well-documented account of a highly contested event may make obsolete previous studies and without doubt will constitute the necessary starting point for all future ones." --Kathleen Flake, author of The Politics of American Religious Identity
"The authors of Massacre at Mountain Meadows have written the best researched, most complete, and most evenhanded account of the Mountain Meadows incident we are likely to have for a long time. Above all they tell a gripping tale. Though I knew the end from the beginning, I began to sweat as the narrative approached its fatal climax. The authors won't let us turn our gaze away from the horrors of that moment." --Richard Bushman, Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies, Claremont Graduate University
"Massacre at Mountain Meadows is arguably the most professional, transparent account of a controversial event in Mormon history produced under church auspices. The work may well mark a major turning point in Latter-day Saint historiography." --Journal of American History
"Massacre at Mountain Meadows deserves to be the standard account of the massacre for both LDS and non-LDS researchers and readers...Walker, Turley, and Leonard have provided a tightly written, riveting narrative ...In this excellent volume readers of every stripe--from undergraduates to scholars to the general public--will find not only the finest extant account of the tragedy of Mountain Meadows but also a window onto the potential, but by no means inevitable, power of religion to contribute to mass violence." --Church History
"It may be tempting to disregard this work as just another in a long line of books written about this tragic event, but it would be a mistake to discount it. The authors have compiled a staggering amount of research, some of which has never been seen before, and present a more thorough and detailed history of Mountain Meadows than has ever been written. . . This meticulously researched book is an important contribution to the study of Mormonism in America and the authors succeeded in telling the story of an often polarizing event in a scholarly and historically responsible way."--Religious Studies Review