Thursday, Apr 28, 2011

Location:
Ken Sanders Rare Books

Ken Sanders Rare Books is pleased to announce a reading and book signing with renowned historians David Bigler and Will Bagley, co-authors of the new book Mormon Rebellion: America’s First Civil War 1857-1858, on Thursday, April 28^th at 7:00 p.m. at our downtown bookstore (268 South 200 East). Copies of Mormon Rebellion ($35.00 Hardcover) will be available for purchase and signing at the event. This event is free and open to the public.

In December 1857, an American president told Congress Governor Brigham Young had used “his despotic power” to start a war against “the laws both of God and man.” It was the first time a territory had launched a rebellion, James Buchanan said, “and humanity itself requires that we should put it down in such a manner that it shall be the last.” David L. Bigler and Will Bagley use long-suppressed sources to revisit the forgotten crisis of 1857 and 1858, when an authoritarian frontier theocracy defied the power of the federal government, declared its independence, burned army supply wagons, murdered some 120 men, women, and children on their way to California, and prepared to usher in an American apocalypse. The Utah War had often been misrepresented as merely an unfortunate misunderstanding, but this groundbreaking study shows that Mormon leaders knew what they were about: they intended to establish an independent empire in the Rocky Mountains. Mormons resistance did not result in full-scale violence only because the region’s Indian Nations refused to play along with Brigham Young’s prophetic plans. Written with verve, wit, and page-turning style, The Mormon Rebellion: America’s First Civil War sets a new benchmark in the interpretation of a new religious movement’s colorful and often violent past.

Independent historian David L. Bigler is a Utah native, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, and a University of Utah graduate in journalism. He received an honorary doctor of letters degree from Southern Utah State College at Cedar City, now Southern Utah University. He retired as director of public affairs for U.S. Steel in 1986 to devote full time to Mormon and western history. He is a fellow and an honorary life member, Utah State Historical Society; a former director, Utah State Board of History and Friends of University of Utah Libraries; and past president, Oregon-California Trails Association. His many articles and books, including The Gold Discovery Journal of Azariah Smith; Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896; and A Winter with the Mormons: The 1852 Letters of Jotham Goodell, and (with Will Bagley), Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, have won awards from the Utah State Historical Society, Westerners International and The Mormon History Association. Dave and his wife, Evah, reside in Roseville, California.

Journalist and historian Will Bagley has written about overland emigration, frontier violence, railroads, mining, and the Mormons. He is the series editor of Arthur H. Clark Company’s series, Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier and is the author and editor of more than twenty books and many articles in popular and professional journals. Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows won a Spur Award from Western Writers of America, the Bancroft History Prize from the Denver Public Library, Westerners International Best Book, and the Western History Association’s Caughey Book Prize for the most distinguished book on the history of the American West in 2002. So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848, the first of four volumes of “Overland West: The Story of the Oregon and California Trails,” won the Western Heritage Award (the Wrangler) in 2011.