Early Christmas Shopping #1

Get your Christmas shopping done early!  Here are four highly collectible and affordable (each $100 or less) pioneer/Western themed items that are great reads.  Please e-mail or call with any questions.

Life of David P. Kimball and Other Sketches by Solomon F. Kimball. Deseret News Press, 1918. First edition. Hardback. Scarce. The story of one of the teenage rescuers of the Martin handcart companies as told by his brother Solomon. Also includes ancestry and patriarchal blessings of Vilate and Heber  C. Kimball. $85.

Among the Shoshones by Elijah N. Wilson “Uncle Nick.” Pinecone Press, 1971. Hardback w/ dust jacket (jacket price-clipped). Scarce reprint. Includes sections on his life among the Mormons. This first edition was suppressed as it was seen to be critical of polygamy. This is a facsimile printing of the extremely rare, 20-copy edition bound only for author’s immediate family. $100.

Forty Years Among the Indians by Daniel W. Jones. Privately published, 1997. Leather. Very attractive photo-reprint of first edition published by a descendant. Jones’ entertaining first-hand narrative documents his experiences as a peacemaker, missionary, and frontier scout among the Indians. $100.

Orrin Porter Rockwell: Man of God, Son of Thunder by Harold Schindler. University of Utah Press, 1966. Hardback. First ed./printing in rare pictorial dust jacket. Schindler’s award-winning biography of enigmatic Mormon frontiersman Orrin Porter Rockwell is a classic of Mormon and Western biography.  Signed by author (now deceased) on title page. $100.

New Site

After some hiccups, we’re up and running on the new site–please change any links to benchmarkbooks.com

 

Signing–Playing with Shadows (Aird/Nichols/Bagley)–Feb 15th

**direct any orders/questions to info@benchmarkbooks.com

Spend an Evening with the Editors

We are excited to announce the publication of Playing with Shadows: Voices Of Dissent In The Mormon West (Kingdom in the West, vol. 13) edited by Polly Aird, Jeff Nichols and Will Bagley, published by the Arthur H. Clark Company. We will have the editors at our store to speak about and sign their book onWednesday, February 15^th.  They will be here from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., speaking at 6:00, and will answer questions and sign books before and after that time.

This collection of narratives by four individuals who abandoned Mormonism—“apostates,” as Brigham Young and other Latter-day Saint leaders labeled them—provides an overview of dissent from the beginning of the religion to the early twentieth century and presents a wide range of disaffection with the faith or its leaders.

Instead of focusing on a single disheartened individual or sect, this collection includes dissenters with different motivations and a wide range of experiences. Some devout Mormon converts, finding Brigham Young’s implementation of the Kingdom of God disillusioning, turned their backs on religion in general. Yet most never lost their love for their fellow Mormons or their longing for the ideal society they had dreamed of building.

Newspaper articles, personal letters, journals, and sermons provide context for the testaments collected here—those of George Armstrong Hicks, Charles Derry, Ann Gordge, and Brigham Young Hampton. The four range from those who felt Brigham Young had not lived up to the precepts of Mormonism, to “backouts” who gave up and left Utah, to a plural wife who constructed a rich fantasy world, to a devoted Latter-day Saint who gave his all only to feel betrayed by his leaders. Young warned one dissenting group that they were “not playing with shadows,” but with “the voice and the hand of the Almighty”; accordingly, many dissenters feared for their livelihoods, and some, for their lives.

We hope you will be able to attend this event, which is sure to be informative and provocative; but if you cannot, you may order a copy which can be signed or personalized and held or shipped to you.

Playing with Shadows (hb, 518 pp.)                                                        $45.00

Most of the earlier KITW volumes are also available—for those interested

in subscribing to the series, we offer a 20% discount on each volume

Other Titles Available
Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector (Polly Aird)–$39.95

Prostitution, Polygamy and Power (Jeff Nichols)–$25.00 (pb)

Always a Cowboy (Will Bagley)–$34.95

Blood of the Prophets (Will Bagley)–$24.95 (pb)/$50 (hb)/$75 (hb, 1^st printing)

Mormon Rebellion (Will Bagley/David Bigler)–$34.95

So Rugged and Mountainous (Will Bagley)–$45.00

Media mail: $5.00 for the first book and $1 for each additional. FedEx/UPS/Priority options available—inquire for details. Utah residents please add 7.05% sales tax.

BENCHMARK BOOKS

3269 S. Main St., Ste. 250
Salt Lake City, UT 84115
801-486-3111
801-486-3452 (fax)
800-486-3112 (orders)
Hours: Mon. – Fri., 10-6; Sat., 10-5
We accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, check, or Money Order

Spend an Evening with an Author–John Dinger–Jan 25th

Spend an Evening with an Author

We are excited to announce the arrival of The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes edited by John S. Dinger, published by Signature Books. We will have the editor at our store to speak about and sign his book on Wednesday, January 25th. He will be here from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., speaking at 6:00, and will answer questions and sign books before and after that time.

While the Nauvoo high council minutes have appeared (albeit in somewhat abridged format) previously, only tantalizing excerpts here and there from the city council minutes have ever emerged. John Dinger (currently a deputy prosecuting attorney) brings his legal expertise to the table in a yeoman’s effort to produce coherent sets of minutes for both of these key Nauvoo decision making bodies. Despite working almost until the point of no return from confusing transcripts, Dinger has compiled a fascinating chronology of the chaos that swirled almost constantly in Nauvoo. 

Leafing through the entries, one quickly notes the breadth of matters that the city council considered. In a unique “created” community where virtually no one had much experience in government, the reader sees a group consulting other cities for precedent and experimenting with ordinances. The entries cover the most mundane (dogs were clearly a pressing problem—several ordinances deal with them!) to weightier matters such as what to do with the Nauvoo Expositor. In the period predating the formation of the city council, one can easily see the seamless blend of temporal and spiritual in the high council discussions. As time passes and secular matters move to the other body, the high council turns attention to hearing complaints. These range from the trivial to the many riveting trials of 1842 when polygamy began to really be whispered about and people began to claim authority from Joseph Smith (due to the influence of John C. Bennett and others) to “take liberties” with the women of Nauvoo. The city of Joseph was at times peaceful, at times chaotic, and these minutes demonstrate this dual nature in a way that few contemporary sources can. 

We hope you will be able to attend this event, which is sure to be insightful and interesting; but if you cannot, you may order a copy which can be signed or personalized and held or shipped to you. 

The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes (hb, 700 pp.) $49.95

Media mail: $4.50 for the first book and $1 for each additional. FedEx/UPS/Priority options available—inquire for details. Utah residents please add 7.05% sales tax.

Evening With an Author–Sam Brown, 10 Jan 2011

 

We are pleased to announce a signing event with Sam Brown, author of the recently published In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death.  The event will be held on Tuesday, January 10–Sam will be here at 5:30 to sign and will begin speaking at 6 PM (he will also be available to sign and chat afterwards).  Click here for a map/directions to the store.  Sam is a frequent blogger at By Common Consent (see his posts here) and has written several award-winning articles on Mormon history (see a list here).

A compelling new interpretation of early Mormonism, Samuel Brown’s In Heaven as It Is On Earth views this religion through the lens of founder Joseph Smith’s profound preoccupation with the specter of death.

Revisiting historical documents and scripture from this novel perspective, Brown offers new insight into the origin and meaning of some of Mormonism’s earliest beliefs and practices. The world of early Mormonism was besieged by death–infant mortality, violence, and disease were rampant. A prolonged battle with typhoid fever, punctuated by painful surgeries including a threatened leg amputation, and the sudden loss of his beloved brother Alvin cast a long shadow over Smith’s own life. Smith embraced and was deeply influenced by the culture of “holy dying”–with its emphasis on deathbed salvation, melodramatic bereavement, and belief in the Providential nature of untimely death–that sought to cope with the widespread mortality of the period. Seen in this light, Smith’s treasure quest, search for Native origins, distinctive approach to scripture, and belief in a post-mortal community all acquire new meaning, as do early Mormonism’s Masonic-sounding temple rites and novel family system. Taken together, the varied themes of early Mormonism can be interpreted as a campaign to extinguish death forever. By focusing on Mormon conceptions of death, Brown recasts the story of first-generation Mormonism, showing a religious movement and its founder at once vibrant and fragile, intrepid and unsettled, human and otherworldly.

A lively narrative history, In Heaven as It Is on Earth illuminates not only the foundational beliefs of early Mormonism but also the larger issues of family and death in American religious history.

In Heaven as It Is on Earth, Samuel Morris Brown

Oxford University Press, 2012

392 pp, hardcover

$34.95

The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes

The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes edited by John S. Dinger.  Signature Books, 2011.  700 pp.  Hardback.  $49.95.  This welcome documentary collection compiles all known city and high council minutes from the often volatile Nauvoo period.  John Dinger has ably organized this chaotic corpus—which consists of loose sheets, rough minute books and finished drafts—into as coherent a narrative as possible.  Helpful footnotes contextualize decisions and give biographical info on people mentioned.  The entries range from the mundane (dogs were apparently on everyone’s minds) to the explosive—several meetings deal with polygamy and its divisive effects as well as the suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor.  This is a fascinating and rich documentary source that will prove invaluable in understanding the complexities of the Nauvoo era.

To order, please call 801-486-3111/800-486-3112