The Annals of Iowa

Review of: Return to the City of Joseph: Modern Mormonism’s Contest for the Soul of Nauvoo, by Scott C. Espli

Hajdik, Anna Thompson

Book Reviews and Notices      87 
erated in Illinois. Under the law, a person of color who migrated to the 
state and failed to post bond was subject to arrest and sale at public 
auction. As late as 1863, when former slaves came into Illinois to fill 
war-related labor shortages, that provision was still enforced. The 
Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to Illinois, so free people 
could still be sold into slavery.  
 Heerman is especially good when exploring the ways people of 
color attempted to resist enslavement in Illinois. He considers how they 
learned to use the courts to establish their freedom, an analysis that will 
be especially useful to historians examining slavery in early Iowa. His 
stories are often filled with engaging detail, drawn especially from 
court records. His final chapters trace the “freedom practices” of com-
munities of color, who assisted those fleeing slavery, and the political 
movement organized by African Americans to overturn the Black Codes. 
This is an important contribution, one that will comfortably share a shelf 
with Robert Dykstra’s Bright Radical Star (1993) and John Craig Ham-
mond’s Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West (2007). 
 
 
Return to the City of Joseph: Modern Mormonism’s Contest for the Soul of 
Nauvoo, by Scott C. Esplin. Urbana, Springfield, and Chicago: Univer-
sity of Illinois Press, 2018. xi, 199 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bib-
liography, index. $99 hardcover, $24.95 paperback.  
Reviewer Anna Thompson Hajdik is a senior lecturer in the English De-
partment and Film Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–White-
water. She is working on an image-based exploration of Iowa’s identity as 
it relates to the American cultural imagination. 
In Return to the City of Joseph, Scott Esplin thoroughly examines the 
fraught religious history of Nauvoo, Illinois, and how it evolved to be-
come a modern-day “Mormon Mecca” on the banks of the Mississippi 
River. The story of Nauvoo is one that combines historic preservation, 
outsider investment, and the role commemoration plays in the shaping 
of history and, perhaps more significantly, religious heritage. Esplin is 
also interested in exploring the underlying tension between the two 
branches of the Mormon faith—the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day 
Saints and the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints (RLDS, recently 
renamed Community of Christ). A central narrative thread of the book 
traces how that tension has both flared up and simmered just beneath 
the surface of the community as a group of wealthy, prominent Latter-
day Saints took an increasing interest in the town during the second half 
of the twentieth century. Esplin draws primarily from archival sources 
and in particular church records to tell this story. He also dives deep 
88      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
into the broader history of Nauvoo, devoting attention to other popula-
tions beyond the Mormons, including French, German, and Irish immi-
grants, who made their presence on the landscape visible. But the con-
tested nature of the town’s Mormon heritage remains the focal point of 
Esplin’s project.  
 As the author outlines in chapter one, after the murder of Joseph 
Smith and continual harassment from non-Mormons in the region, 
most of the Mormons followed Brigham Young to Utah, but some 
stayed behind and retained a foothold in the community. Chapter two 
focuses on the beginning of the RLDS through the lens of an acrimoni-
ous relationship between Brigham Young and the Smith family, pri-
marily Joseph’s widow, Emma. They battled over Joseph Smith’s legacy 
and fought over the Nauvoo church properties. Chapter three traces 
how the Utah-based church’s interest in Nauvoo grew significantly af-
ter 1900, as that branch of the church began to purchase sites in the Mid-
west associated with Smith, most notably the Carthage jail where he 
met his demise at the hands of an angry mob. As the Utah-based church 
continued to make its historic link to Nauvoo more visible, the RLDS 
raised numerous concerns and criticisms about what it perceived as 
geographic overreach. As Esplin states, “As the Utah-based Church 
expanded beyond its western boundaries back into traditionally Reor-
ganized Church strongholds across the Midwest, the latter group felt 
threatened.” Esplin further notes, “Contests over memory were stronger 
than the potentially unifying social functions of commemoration” (57). 
This last point is further explored in the remaining chapters as various 
interests, from private individuals to top church leaders to historic 
preservationists and government officials, worked to make Nauvoo an 
appealing destination for tourists, Mormon and non-Mormon alike. In 
chapter four, Esplin effectively explores yet another tension in Nauvoo 
that continues to inform the tourist experience to this day—that of his-
tory versus religion or, more specifically, the celebration of westward 
expansion versus proselytizing or missionary purposes. More recently, 
religion has in many ways superseded the historical narrative in Nau-
voo, and that has “created greater conflicts in the city, as other stake-
holders . . . envisioned a different future from the celebration of Nau-
voo’s past” (101). This tension took on particular significance in the late 
1990s, as the Utah-based Mormons announced their intent to rebuild 
the Nauvoo Temple, which had been destroyed by fire in 1848. In chap-
ter six, Esplin includes the voices of several non-Mormon Nauvoo resi-
dents, including the lone city council member who voted against giving 
the church a building permit for the temple. “[The Mormons] were here 
for seven years in [the 1840s]. I have been here 48 years. People out there 
Book Reviews and Notices      89 
[in Utah] are not even aware that people live here, thrive here, raise 
families here” (134–35). Esplin concludes the book by observing that the 
restoration of Nauvoo is “an American story” that offers important les-
sons on faith tourism, contested space, and commemoration (148). 
 The book’s great strength is Esplin’s ability to consistently situate 
his research within the broader scholarship of tourism and heritage 
studies, cultural studies (especially work focused on memory and com-
memoration), and the American Midwest. By doing so, the author 
demonstrates that the history of the Mormon faith is indeed uniquely 
American in its orientation. That history, like our national history, is 
messy at times, and Esplin does not minimize or gloss over those times. 
The book occasionally bogs down with minute details regarding prop-
erty acquisition or church leaders’ correspondence. Ultimately, how-
ever, Esplin provides a valuable text that would be of particular use to 
scholars interested in America’s religious history, historic preservation 
in the Midwest, and the constantly contested nature of cultural memory.  
 
 
Lincoln in the Illinois Legislature, by Ron J. Keller. The Concise Lincoln 
Library. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2019. xi, 160 pp. 
Map, illustrations, notes, index. $24.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Kenneth J. Winkle is Thomas C. Sorensen Professor of American 
History at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is the author of Young 
Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln (2001). 
In Lincoln in the Illinois Legislature, Ron J. Keller identifies the four terms 
that Abraham Lincoln served in the Illinois legislature from 1834 to 1842 
as an oft-forgotten but formative period. Although born in Kentucky 
and destined for greatness—and an untimely death—while serving as 
president in Washington, D.C., Abraham Lincoln spent most of his life 
in the Midwest. As he grew up and came of age in the invigorating at-
mosphere of the American heartland, Lincoln imbibed the rural and 
small-town virtues that he later came to personify. In 1834, at age 25, he 
was a newcomer to central Illinois: poor, uneducated, and still uncer-
tain of his trajectory in life. Settling in New Salem, a small pioneer vil-
lage near Springfield, Lincoln seized the opportunity to prove himself 
to his new neighbors, who found in him an earnest if rough-hewn rep-
resentative of their own values. Helping him to improve himself, they 
supported his pursuit of a political career with near unanimity. In short, 
Lincoln won his first elective office on the strength of his personal rep-
utation for honesty, hard work, common sense, self-improvement, and 
community spirit.  


English

Return to the City of Joseph: Modern Mormonism's Contest for the Soul of Nauvoo

Index to v. 79 and Back Matter, The Annals of Iowa, v. 79 no. 4 Fall 2020

Review of: Massacre in Minnesota: The Dakota War of 1862, the Most Violent Ethnic Conflict in American History, Gary Clayton Anderso

Clemmons, Linda

Massacre in Minnesota: The Dakota War of 1862, the Most Violent Ethnic Conflict in American History

Review of: Peppermint Kings: A Rural American History, Dan Alloss

Bremer, Jeff

Peppermint Kings: A Rural American History

Review of: When Sunflowers Bloomed Red: Kansas and the Rise of Socialism in America, R. Alton Lee amd Steven Co

Hall, Greg

When Sunflowers Bloomed Red: Kansas and the Rise of Socialism in America

Klumpp, Andrew

Editor's Perspective

Colony before Party: The Ethnic Origins of Sioux County's Political Tradition

Review of:Visions of the Tallgrass: Prairie Photographs by Harvey Payne, photographs by Harvey Payne, essays by James P. Ronda

Conard, Rebecca

Book Reviews and Notices      113 
as director that alumni begin to see “a sea change in the gender and 
ethnic politics of the program” (343). 
 Along the way, Dowling discusses a roughly equal number of poets 
and fiction writers—summarizing some well-known anecdotes from 
Workshop lore (such as the 1954 fistfight between future Pulitzer Prize–
winning poets Philip Levine and John Berryman), providing thorough 
research on some lesser-known alumni (including poet Robert Shelley 
and novelist Marguerite Young), and giving a disturbing yet nuanced 
account of the misogyny, sexual predation, and hyper-masculinity that 
permeated Workshop culture for generations. The central chapters on 
the 1970s experiences of Cisneros, Joy Harjo, and Rita Dove are among 
the most compelling in the book. 
 Not all the anecdotes shared in A Delicate Aggression illustrate 
Dowling’s main thesis, and reviewers have been critical of when the 
book’s large-scale focus narrows to the minutiae of individual episodes. 
But Dowling demonstrates how the contradictions raised by Engle’s 
creative and market-driven visions remain as applicable for the Work-
shop in the twenty-first century as they were when Engle inter-
rupted class to proudly announce that he had secured funding for an 
“Iowa Natural Gas Fellowship in Creative Writing” (63). 
 
 
Visions of the Tallgrass: Prairie Photographs by Harvey Payne, photographs 
by Harvey Payne, essays by James P. Ronda. Charles M. Russell Center 
Series on Art and Photography of the American West 33. Norman: Uni-
versity of Oklahoma Press, 2018. xv, 162 pp. Color photographs, map, 
notes, bibliography, index. $34.95 hardcover.  
Reviewer Rebecca Conard is professor of history emeritus at Middle Ten-
nessee State University. She is the author of Places of Quiet Beauty: Parks, 
Preserves, and Environmentalism (1997). 
Visions of the Tallgrass is a paean to the great prairie that once covered 
central North America, more particularly the 45,000 acres protected by 
The Nature Conservancy as the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie 
Preserve near Pawhuska, Oklahoma, formerly the Barnard tract of the 
Chapman-Barnard Ranch established by Texas oilmen James A. Chapman 
and Horace G. Barnard. More than a hundred captivating photographs 
by nature photographer Harvey Payne, a native Oklahoman, are situ-
ated in a set of discursive essays by noted western historian James P. 
Ronda, a self-described “child of the Chicago suburbs” and trans-
planted academic (14). The skillfully interwoven text and images reflect 
an enduring friendship that began in 1990, when Payne was serving as 
the preserve’s first director and Ronda arrived at the University of Tulsa 
as the first holder of the Barnard Chair in Western American History. 
114      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
 Following an introductory chapter, eight illustrated essays approach 
the tallgrass prairie from different angles of perception: comprehending 
the vast open space that grasslands once covered and the competing 
visions of the Great Plains as garden and wasteland; reading the weather 
through the expansive and ever-changing skyscape; wading into the 
seasons of grass; understanding the role of fire in sustaining prairie en-
vironments; witnessing a bison rut, a magnificent display of regenera-
tion in a species almost extinguished by industrial technology, market 
forces, and demography; scanning the horizon for raptors, prairie 
chickens, wild turkeys, waterfowl, and neotropical migrants; observing 
the “creatures great and small” that are integral to prairie ecology (127); 
and catching “a glimpse of wholeness in nature” as dawn emerges 
(143). Throughout his essays, Ronda pays homage to just about every-
one who has written about the prairie, all of whom are cited in “Sug-
gestions for Further Reading” at the back of the book. Payne’s elegant 
photographs capture the grandeur of prairie landscapes and skyscapes 
as well as the seemingly infinite variety of wildlife. His many photo-
graphs of bison, taken during the brutality of winter as well as the fair-
weather seasons, suggest a special affinity for the burly animal that once 
roamed the entire geographical range of North America’s grasslands.  
 These photographs are also, as Ronda observes, a reminder that 
“large herds of bison roaming over open unfenced country is a feature 
of prairie life that no longer exists. . . . They live in a world defined by 
human beings” (106). Iowa is a case in point. Less than one tenth of one 
percent of Iowa’s native prairie remains out of the nearly 30 million 
acres that once covered the state. The remnants are mostly in protected 
areas, largely set aside in the past half century. Only two of them—the 
5,600-acre Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge and The Nature Con-
servancy’s 6,000-acre Broken Kettle Grasslands—are large enough to 
support bison. Scores of smaller areas are in designated preserves and 
wildlife areas scattered across the state, ranging in size from 3 un-
plowed acres in the historic Butler Center Cemetery to the 790-acre Five 
Ridge Prairie in Plymouth County. Although precious little is left of 
Iowa’s native landscape, most Iowans can now explore a preserved 
prairie remnant without traveling too far from home. 
 Visions of the Tallgrass is an intimate excursion through the tallgrass 
prairie. The ethos that Payne and Ronda share is evident on every page. 
Together, they have created a feast of words and pictures that is to be 
savored and lingered over.  


Visions of the Tallgrass: Prairie Photographs by Harvey Payne

Review of: We’ve Been Here All Along: Wisconsin’s Early Gay History, by R. Richard Wagner

Hommerding, Christopher

We've Been Here All Along: Wisconsin's Early Gay History

Review of: Avant-Garde in the Cornfields: Architecture, Landscape, and Preservation in New Harmony, edited by Ben Nicholson and Michelangelo Sabatino

Guiler, Thomas A.

308      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
chapters on later waves of immigrants, whose background and experi-
ence in America differed significantly from the earlier overwhelmingly 
peasant immigration. 
 The authors enhance the value of the study by addressing rural set-
tlements in addition to the typical focus on the massive ethnic presence 
in Chicago. Well-chosen photographs and helpful charts enrich the 
work. The focus on large national fraternal federations headquartered 
in Chicago tends to over-emphasize the role of ideology as a salient fac-
tor; smaller settlements often showed cooperation and indifference to of-
ficial viewpoints propagated by Chicago-based national organs whose 
interest lay in distinguishing their organization from others. The book 
provides a useful and well-written overview of a major immigrant group 
in Illinois. 
 
 
Avant-Garde in the Cornfields: Architecture, Landscape, and Preservation in 
New Harmony, edited by Ben Nicholson and Michelangelo Sabatino. 
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019. xlv, 351 pp. Maps, 
illustrations, notes, index. $40.00 paperback. 
Thomas A. Guiler is Assistant Professor of History and Public Humanities 
at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library in Delaware. He is completing 
work on his book, The Handcrafted Utopia: Arts and Crafts Communities in 
Progressive America. 
Avant-Garde in the Cornfields is an impressive work that highlights the 
history of innovation, utopia, and spirituality in the built environment 
of New Harmony, Indiana. Over seven chapters and an introduction, 
the authors argue that through historic preservation and the erection of 
important works of modern architecture, New Harmony was revital-
ized as a spiritual retreat in the twentieth century—effectively striking 
a utopian through line from its Harmonist founding under George 
Rapp and the socialism and intellectual accomplishments of Robert 
Owen and William Maclure in the nineteenth century to the eco-spir-
itual vision of Jane Blaffer Owen in the twentieth century. Each chapter 
highlights a specific aspect of modern New Harmony: a biographical 
sketch of Jane and Kenneth Dale Owen, artistic patronage, and the time-
line of historic preservation before diving into specific architectural case 
studies. These case studies include, Philip Johnson’s Roofless Church, 
Frederick Kiesler’s unrealized grotto, New Harmony’s gardens, and 
Richard Meier’s Athenaeum. This is ultimately an unexpected and well-
argued work that is sure to become an important resource for scholars 
Book Reviews and Notices      309 
of modern architecture, historic preservation, midwestern studies, and 
intentional communities. 
Most importantly, the authors extend the timeline of New Har-
mony’s utopian tradition arguing that like George Rapp and Robert 
Owen before her Jane Blaffer Owen was herself a utopian dreamer who 
used modern architecture and her own spiritual vision to establish New 
Harmony as a reborn utopia. In making this claim, the authors rightly 
contend that there were not two, but actually three iterations of utopian 
experimentation in New Harmony—making it not only a historic uto-
pian community, but also a contemporary one. This book also does a 
standout job of resurrecting the figure of Jane Blaffer Owen and placing 
her alongside figures such as the Rockefellers, Henry Ford, and the du 
Ponts who reinterpreted American history through their own twenti-
eth-century lenses. Like those pivotal figures, the authors show how 
Blaffer Owen not only preserved historic New Harmony, but also 
reimagined it, with the help of theologian Paul Tillich and modern ar-
chitect Philip Johnson, into a contemporary spiritual meditative retreat 
nestled amidst art and nature. Moreover, the authors do great service to 
New Harmony by once again reminding readers that New Harmony is 
a foundational locale for some of the most cutting-edge and important 
modern architecture in the United States, boasting formative works by 
Philip Johnson and Richard Meier among many other artists and archi-
tects. 
However, the authors might have paid more attention to the spe-
cific ideological visions, built environments, and historical trajectories 
of the two nineteenth-century utopian communities in New Harmony—
especially as they relate to their visions of utopia and specific communal 
practices, which while related, are fundamentally different. Diving into 
how these two histories and principles influenced Blaffer Owen’s land-
scapes would have added significantly more texture and further elu-
cidated the connections between Blaffer Owen’s work and that of Rapp 
and Owen/Maclure, which sometimes get muddled amidst the twenti-
eth century vision for New Harmony. In this sense, the reader is left 
wondering how much of the communal aspect of historic New Har-
mony influenced Jane Blaffer Owen, especially in the Cold War era 
when expressing notions of communism found people on blacklists and 
the hippie communes of the 1960s flourished. Finally, it would have 
been interesting to hear the voices of the New Harmony residents who 
lived through this era. As battles over the future of New Harmony 
raged in upper society, what did ordinary people who lived in this site 
think of the ideas, structures, and outsiders that came into town?  
310      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
Nevertheless, Avant-Garde in the Cornfields is a tremendous achieve-
ment that promises to be the crucial resource for chronicling New Har-
mony’s long and important utopian evolution. 
 
 
 
 


Not a member yet