The Annals of Iowa

Review of: Transcendental Meditation in America: How a New Age Movement Remade a Small Town in Iowa, by Joseph Weber

Peters, Shawn Francis

Book Reviews and Notices      349 
Transcendental Meditation in America: How a New Age Movement Remade 
a Small Town in Iowa, by Joseph Weber. Iowa City: University of Iowa 
Press, 2014. viii, 221 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $18.00 
paperback. 
Reviewer Shawn Francis Peters is a lecturer in the Integrated Liberal Studies 
Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of The Ca-
tonsville Nine: A Story of Faith and Resistance in the Vietnam Era (2012); The Yoder 
Case: Religious Freedom, Education, and Parental Rights (2003); and Judging Jeho-
vah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution (2000). 
Anyone who views Iowa as being culturally homogenous should take 
a close look at the extraordinarily diverse spiritual and religious life that 
has taken root in the eastern half of the state over the past century. 
Cedar Rapids boasts the longest-standing Muslim mosque in North 
America (erected in 1934); Hasidic Jews flocked to Postville and built a 
formidable, if controversial, kosher meatpacking empire; and buggies 
belonging to the Old Order Amish clatter along the thoroughfares in 
and around Kalona. And, of course, there is Fairfield, the unlikely Jef-
ferson County home of Maharishi University of Management (MUM) 
and an epicenter for the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement in 
the United States. The story of TM’s tumultuous presence in Fairfield is 
the subject of Joseph Weber’s Transcendental Meditation in America: How 
a New Age Movement Remade a Small Town in Iowa. 
 In this original, concise, and generally engaging account, Weber 
does not purport to offer a thorough history of TM and its antecedents. 
Nor does he claim to furnish a comprehensive biography of the move-
ment’s founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who achieved global fame in 
the late 1960s after several celebrities, most notably the members of the 
Beatles, came under his tutelage). Rather, his aim is to chronicle the 
myriad tensions that have beset Fairfield since the TM movement took 
over the campus of the bankrupt Parsons College in 1975. 
 As Weber tells it, the changeover from Parsons to MUM failed to 
precipitate the usual assortment of “town versus gown” problems 
found in many municipalities that feature an academic institution. The 
TM-based school banned drinking and attracted clean-cut students and 
faculty who were sincerely interested in achieving enlightenment. (If 
anything, MUM attracted a more straight-laced crowd than Parsons, 
which had been a notorious “party school.”) But locals wondered about 
the newcomers—vegetarians who meditated twice daily and followed 
an Indian guru. Put simply, some feared that the newcomers were reli-
gious crackpots. After all, they promised a path toward world peace 
and touted something called the “Maharishi Effect,” the notion that 
there would be measurable improvements in everyone’s quality of life 
350      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
if just one percent of the population practiced TM. Some of them even 
endeavored to practice “Yogic Flying” (which was as implausible as it 
sounds).  
 Just how much would the quirky beliefs and practices of these 
interlopers fundamentally alter the character of the town? The heart of 
Weber’s book is his chronicle of the still-evolving changes wrought in 
Fairfield by TM: the appearance of Indian restaurants, the emergence 
of TM practitioners as candidates for political office, the alteration of 
landmark buildings on the former Parsons campus. For the most part, 
Weber writes efficiently and even-handedly, in a concise reportorial 
style that renders the book accessible to a broad audience. (Weber was 
a journalist for many years before taking up a teaching post at the Uni-
versity of Nebraska–Lincoln, and that training is apparent in the breezy 
prose style employed here.) We see a Fairfield in flux—not necessarily 
better or worse than it was before the arrival of TM, but undeniably dif-
ferent. And we also see a town where practitioners of TM remain some-
what aloof, even four decades after they started arriving. In one of the 
book’s most telling passages, a local religious leader tells Weber that 
Fairfield is made up of “two groups that go our separate ways” (39)—
TM devotees, and everyone else. 
 Books about spirituality inevitably have to grapple with questions 
of legitimacy and veracity, particularly when groups make grandiose 
claims, as TM’s exponents often do. Weber, to his credit, does this 
deftly, charting TM’s successes as well as its failures. He reports that 
while TM-based programs have produced positive results in primary 
and secondary schools, the benefits of meditation were not enough to 
help a MUM student who stabbed and killed a classmate on campus in 
2004. Weber offers no verdict on TM’s ultimate truth, but he clearly is 
not naive about some of the wilder assertions made to promote it. 
 While admirably fair, Weber’s narrative approach has some draw-
backs. The book lacks a clear narrative focus; no single compelling story 
or character jumps from the pages to bring the story to life in especially 
vivid or memorable terms. Anecdotes and individuals come and go as 
Weber recounts how TM practitioners have reshaped Fairfield. More-
over, some extraneous or obscure details probably do not add much to 
the overall account, and some facts are repeated in several different 
places. 


English

Transcendental Meditation in America: How a New Age Movement Remade a Small Town in Iowa

Review of: "American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church," by Alex Beam

Kerstetter, Todd M.

Book Reviews and Notices      189 
American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mor-
mon Church, by Alex Beam. New York: Public Affairs, 2014. xv, 334 pp. 
Illustrations, map, cast of characters, chronology, notes, glossary, bibli-
ography, index. $26.99 hardcover. 
Reviewer Todd M. Kerstetter is associate professor of history at Texas Christian 
University. He is the author of God’s Country, Uncle Sam’s Land: Faith and Conflict 
in the American West (2005). 
In American Crucifixion Alex Beam provocatively depicts the 1844 mur-
der of Joseph Smith in western Illinois as a crucifixion. Beam, a gifted 
writer with an eye for great stories, makes his case through an intimate 
discussion of Mormon history and the social and political development 
of frontier Illinois. He mined appropriate archives at Yale University 
and in Utah, Illinois, and elsewhere; read widely in up-to-date second-
ary literature; and consulted an array of experts on Mormon history in 
preparing this solidly researched work. Almost all of the action unfolds 
in Illinois from the arrival of Mormon settlers in 1838 through Smith’s 
death in 1844. Missouri, from which the Mormons were expelled, has a 
minor but critical role. Iowa makes a cameo appearance. 
 This journal’s readers will find much to appreciate in Beam’s book. 
Mormons and Mormonism migrated from upstate New York to Ohio 
to Missouri to Illinois and then through Iowa and Nebraska to Utah, 
among other places. During the Illinois period, the Mormons estab-
lished a theocratic city-state at Nauvoo, on the bank of the Mississippi 
River across from Iowa, built their second temple, and made quantum 
leaps in developing ritual and doctrine, perhaps most notably signifi-
cant developments in plural marriage. Most important, Smith’s murder 
deprived the Mormon community of its founding prophet, leader, and 
first candidate for president of the United States. In the aftermath, 
Brigham Young emerged as Smith’s successor and took the main body 
of Mormons out of Illinois, across Iowa, and on to Utah in a migration 
that has been likened to the biblical Exodus. At another level, the book’s 
discussion of Nauvoo and surrounding non-Mormon communities 
provides great insight into the development of social order and justice 
on what was at the time the frontier of U.S. expansion. 
 Beam thoroughly explores events of 1838 through 1844, years that 
saw the Mormons flee Missouri and develop Nauvoo. He wisely begins 
the book with helpful tools for newcomers to the topic: a cast of charac-
ters, a list of place names, and a map. Eleven of the book’s 14 chapters 
deal with the five-year period leading up to Smith’s murder. Events 
turn quickly as the Mormons transform from a welcomed force for 
settlement and development to a detested community. As Nauvoo 
boomed from a sleepy river village to a city of 10,000 that threatened to 
190      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
rival Chicago, non-Mormons in the area began to resent their new 
neighbors’ influence and unusual habits. By chapter four, “Everybody 
Hates the Mormons,” the seeds of conflict have sprouted. Chapter six, 
“The Perversion of Sacred Things,” reveals the deep discord that af-
fected life in and around Nauvoo. Conflict over plural marriage pitted 
Mormons against Mormons as well as non-Mormons. Smith’s destruc-
tion of an opposition newspaper put him at odds with the nation’s fun-
damental belief in the freedom of the press and might have done as 
much as anything to precipitate his demise. As tensions rose, Smith de-
clared martial law in Nauvoo, which ultimately yielded a charge of trea-
son that landed him in jail in Carthage, the county seat. A vigilante mob 
stormed the prison and killed Smith and his brother Hyrum, a potential 
successor. In Beam’s telling, Smith foresaw his demise and viewed his 
opponents as wishing to crucify him. He casts Thomas Ford, governor 
of Illinois, as Pontius Pilate, the secular figure unwilling to stop a vigi-
lante “crucifixion,” carried out in this case by firearms. Two chapters 
discuss how the Mormons responded to the murders and their after-
math. Beam helps his readers by providing a summary of Mormon his-
tory and theology early in the book. 
 Beam, a journalist and writer who has published two novels and 
several works of nonfiction, tells the story in lively, engaging prose that 
should appeal to both general and academic audiences. He presents an 
admirably balanced treatment of conflicts in which each side has been 
vilified. Mormon scholars likely will not find much new here. Readers 
interested in antebellum midwestern history might, especially if they 
have not paid much attention to Mormon history. Labeling Joseph 
Smith’s death a “crucifixion” bends the word’s meaning and stands to 
generate controversy by likening Smith to Jesus Christ. Whatever short-
comings might attach to Beam’s usage, it fits on enough levels to inspire 
thoughtful reconsideration of how religion, society, and government in-
tersected on the Illinois frontier in the 1840s. 
 
From Vicksburg to Cedar Creek: The 22nd Iowa Infantry in the Civil War, by 
Thomas P. McKenna. Iowa City: Camp Pope Publishing, 2014. 220 pp. 
Illustrations, maps, glossary, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. 
$28.95 hardcover, $18.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Kenneth L. Lyftogt is a lecturer in history at the University of North-
ern Iowa. He is the author of several books on Iowa and the Civil War, including 
Iowa’s Forgotten General: Matthew Mark Trumbull and the Civil War (2005). 
Few Civil War regiments have a story to compare with that of the 22nd 
Iowa Infantry, which served in both the Western and Eastern theaters 
of the war, with a battle record as gallant and as tragic as any. The 22nd 


American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church

Back Matter, The Annals of Iowa, v. 74 no.2 Spring 2015

Front Matter, The Annals of Iowa, v. 74 no.2 Spring 2015

Front Matter, The Annals of Iowa, v. 74 no. 1 Winter 2015

Review of: "Hoover's FBI and the Fourth Estate: The Campaign to Control the Press and the Bureau's Image," by Matthew Ceci

Durham, Frank

Hoover's FBI and the Fourth Estate: The Campaign to Control the Press and the Bureau's Image

Front Matter, The Annals of Iowa, v. 74 no.4 Fall 2015

Review of: Little Hawk and the Lone Wolf: A Memoir, by Raymond C. Kaquatosh

Britten, Thomas A.

Book Reviews and Notices     435 
research, arranged interviews, and began to write. The result is service-
able but far from definitive. It reflects a variety of strengths as well as 
significant limitations. The book will be informative for those who 
know little about the topic but will not meet the needs or expectations 
of academic historians. 
 Prohibition in Eastern Iowa provides a cursory overview of the imple-
mentation and enforcement of prohibition in eastern Iowa from 1920 to 
1933. McCann organized her book into eight chapters plus an introduc-
tion, conclusion, and bibliography. She includes chapters on organiza-
tions involved in the campaign, on brewers and the liquor industry, on 
the impact of prohibition on the state, and even a chapter on “loop holes.” 
 McCann writes reasonably well; most readers will have no trouble 
with her prose. Her chapters use bold type and subheads to highlight 
subtopics of particular importance. More important, many of the chap-
ters have extended quotations from numerous local newspapers. Each 
quotation block is printed in italics but not set off from the rest of the 
text. Some readers will find this use of bold type, roman type, and ex-
tended italics to be disconcerting. Although each newspaper quotation 
is identified by the title of the paper and the date of publication, 
McCann does not provide specific citations for other sources that she 
used in her research. 
 Prohibition in Eastern Iowa is one of several similar books published 
under the auspices of The Iowan, a company devoted to promoting the 
state’s culture and heritage. As a magazine, The Iowan goes back to 1952; 
in recent years, the company has branched into book publishing as well. 
With all of its publications, The Iowan relies on free-lance writers and 
historians to produce articles and books that celebrate as well as inform. 
Both the author and the publisher are to be commended for their work 
in this effort. 
Little Hawk and the Lone Wolf: A Memoir, by Raymond C. Kaquatosh. 
Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2014. xi, 259 pp. $22.95 
hardcover. 
Reviewer Thomas A. Britten is associate professor of history at the University 
of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is the author of The Lipan Apaches (2010); Black 
Warriors: A History of the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts (1999); and American Indi-
ans in World War I: At War and at Home (1997). 
Raymond C. Kaquatosh (Little Hawk) was born July 25, 1924, on the 
Menominee reservation in eastern Wisconsin. The fifth of seven chil-
dren born to a Menominee medicine woman, Raymond grew up in a 
caring and stable household until his father’s death in 1933 at the height 
436     THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
of the Great Depression. Unable to make ends meet, Margaret Kaqua-
tosh sent nine-year-old Raymond to the Menominee Boarding School at 
Keshena. After his return home a year later, Raymond worked various 
odd jobs to help provide for his family. During the winter of 1935 he 
encountered a lone timber wolf that he tamed and befriended. The wolf, 
whom Raymond named Kernel, became a close companion and protec-
tor for the next 20 years. Following U.S. entry into World War II, Ray-
mond enlisted in the Marine Corps and served in the South Pacific, 
where he was wounded in action and contracted malaria. Upon his 
demobilization and return home, Raymond attended high school in 
Wausau. There he met and married his wife, Elaine. In 1947, at Elaine’s 
urging, Raymond entered flight school; in August of that year he be-
came one of the first Menominee Indians to earn a pilot’s license.  
 Little Hawk and the Lone Wolf provides an important Native Ameri-
can perspective on the trials and tribulations many midwesterners 
faced during the Great Depression and World War II eras. Although he 
was the occasional victim of racism and racially inspired stereotyping, 
Kaquatosh also experienced compassion, respect, and kindness from 
boarding school personnel, military officials, and hospital staff. His 
memoir is invariably upbeat and optimistic. Because of the graphic 
nature of some of his wartime recollections and periodic irreverent 
humor, the book is not appropriate for young children but would cer-
tainly be suitable for high schoolers and above.  
 
 
Sounds of the New Deal: The Federal Music Project in the West, by Peter 
Gough. Music in American Life. Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: Uni-
versity of Illinois Press, 2015. xvi, 259 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliog-
raphy, index. $50.00 hardcover. 
Reviewer Kenneth J. Bindas is professor of history and chair of the History De-
partment at Kent State University. His books include All of This Music Belongs to 
the Nation: The WPA’s Federal Music Project and American Society, 1935–1939 (1996). 
Sounds of the New Deal is an interesting and informative book about the 
WPA’s Federal Music Project (FMP) and its influence and effect on the 
American West. In it Peter Gough argues that “the WPA music pro-
grams in the West left behind an enduring legacy that has shaped the 
region’s social, cultural, political, and even historical progress to the 
present day” (88). 
 Many sections of the book are enlightening. The discussion of the 
FMP in Colorado, Utah, Oregon, and Washington best captures the 
essence of Gough’s argument, as he does well in that chapter to define 
what he means by the West and how the FMP projects in those states 


Little Hawk and the Lone Wolf: A Memoir

Back Matter, The Annals of Iowa, v. 74 no.3 Summer 2015

Review of: "The Bingo Queens of Oneida: How Two Moms Started Tribal Gaming in Wisconsin," by Mike Hoeft

Ratteree, Kathleen

Book Reviews and Notices      211 
enjoyed the lilac’s fragrant blossoms as she brought purpose and beauty 
to her prairie homestead, of which the lilac is all that remains.  
 Hildebrand’s work reflects his seasoned skills as a writer, but he 
tells us that writing skills are learned more through insight than tech-
nique. Reading Hildebrand’s work will get you thinking about your 
own life. That is what he intends. He writes for an audience not to en-
tertain, but to encourage. As he tells his stories, he gives voice to all of 
us who have ever sat by a small fire on a summer night and listened to 
the crickets creak while we watched the faces of our family members. 
As we look up at the moon, we try to find the words to tell them how 
much they mean to us. Hildebrand gives us the words. He conveys the 
honest emotions that are the heart of things.  
The Bingo Queens of Oneida: How Two Moms Started Tribal Gaming in Wis-
consin, by Mike Hoeft. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2014. 
xxi, 189 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $16.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Kathleen Ratteree is an independent consultant for the Oneida Nation 
of Wisconsin. She holds an M.S. in anthropology and a masters of public health 
from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has written an article series on 
blood quantum and identity for the tribal newspaper, Kalihwisaks. She lives in 
Denmark, Wisconsin. 
The first Oneida bingo game in 1976 grossed $85. It was held in the first 
Indian bingo hall in Wisconsin and one of the first in the United States. 
Today, the Oneida casino, located just outside Green Bay, is a multi-
million-dollar industry that generates almost 50 percent of total tribal 
revenue. Before Foxwoods and Potawatomi Casino, several enterprising 
tribes got their start in the gaming industry by opening card rooms and 
bingo parlors. In The Bingo Queens of Oneida, Mike Hoeft tracks the pro-
gression of Oneida gaming from a small-stakes bingo game to help pay 
the civic center’s light bill to a vital enterprise that finances health care, 
education, social services, and capital improvements on the reservation. 
For Hoeft, “Oneida bingo was born of many mothers” (28), and the 
book tells the story of how two particularly determined Oneida women, 
Sandra (Ninham) Brehmer and Alma Webster, created the tribe’s first 
major source of revenue on a reservation where about half the popula-
tion lived in poverty. 
 Hoeft focuses specifically on Oneida gaming. However, the story 
mirrors struggles elsewhere in Indian Country. “Indian gaming” is a 
recent phenomenon that has rapidly developed in unanticipated ways. 
It has generated complex legal issues ranging from constitutional 
clashes over state and federal powers to rivalries within and between 
212      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
tribes and states. Hoeft, a seasoned Green Bay journalist, has crafted a 
volume to help readers understand the nuances of the controversial ter-
rain of Indian gaming. The clean, straightforward writing is supported 
by meticulous research and abundant interviews. Hoeft, a non-Native, 
is the son-in-law of Brehmer, one of the “Bingo Queens.” Although 
Hoeft’s familial connections are not necessary to tell the story, they do 
add richness to his descriptions of community dynamics and tribal pol-
itics. The result is a rare glimpse into contemporary American Indian 
life.  
 Although Hoeft focuses on bingo’s heyday between 1975 and 1985, 
when much of the tribe’s modern infrastructure was laid, he casts a 
wider net, situating the Oneida story in larger national politics, such as 
the Oneida role in the Revolutionary War, the push from their home-
lands in the early nineteenth century, and federal legislation such as the 
Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the termination era of the 1950s, and 
recent efforts to promote tribal sovereignty. The women who operated 
the early games were not trying to make a political statement, however; 
rather, they were attempting to support their families. In 1976 the tribe 
had no tax base and little revenue. Bingo provided employment and 
gave Oneidas a reason to remain on or return to the reservation.  
 Hoeft’s admiration for these enterprising women is evident through-
out the volume. He does detail the lives of male tribal leaders who 
worked alongside them, but he emphasizes the roles of power, status, 
and responsibility that women fulfilled. He spends a great deal of time 
examining the gender dynamics in traditional matriarchal/matrilineal 
societies such as Oneida. In such societies, women have maintained the 
role of providers in the community. If someone needs help, “women get 
together and get it done” (143). One interviewee used the powerful cul-
tural metaphor of corn to explain women’s role in the emergence of 
bingo. The power of women came through their control of the agricul-
tural system. Women were traditionally in charge of cultivating and 
gathering corn to feed everyone. “Bingo was like a big corn crop . . . it 
helped sustain us” (143).  
 Relying so heavily on this particular cash crop, however, is worri-
some for many, both Native and non-Native. Readers must judge for 
themselves whether Indian gaming is “a tool that strengthens tribal cul-
ture or hastens its end” (xx). Although Hoeft does not offer predictions 
for the future, he is sympathetic in his handling of Oneida gaming. He 
argues that, at least in its inception, the benefits of gaming far out-
weighed the drawbacks; it bonded Oneidas together and strengthened 
connections to the non-Native communities of Green Bay and beyond. 
The ultimate message of the book is one of hope, resistance, and survival: 
Book Reviews and Notices      213 
the Oneida, like many other Native peoples, have shown the ability to 
thrive in new environments, and they will carry that resourcefulness 
into the twenty-first century. 
Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival, by Laurence Gonzales. New 
York: W. W. Norton, 2014. ix, 415 pp. Illustrations, notes on sources, list 
of interviews, notes, index. $27.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Frank Durham is associate professor in the University of Iowa’s School 
of Journalism and Mass Communication. His research and writing have focused 
on critical analyses of media framing processes, including news coverage of the 
failed attempt to frame the cause of the crash of TWA Flight 800 in July 1996. 
When United Airlines Flight 232 made an emergency crash landing at 
the Sioux City, Iowa, airport, on July 19, 1989, the DC-10 had lost its 
steering when its tail engine exploded. En route from Denver to Chi-
cago, it had sustained irreparable damage to its hydraulic steering 
system, making a crash inevitable. In heroic fashion, the plane’s pilot, 
Alfred C. Haynes, and a passenger who was a licensed DC-10 instructor 
muscled the plane down, using the throttle to control the rudderless 
plane. Amazingly, 185 of the 296 people on board survived the massive, 
fiery crash.  
 The challenge for author Laurence Gonzales in telling this tale of 
heroism, loss, and survival was how to narrate such a traumatic event 
that lasted such a brief time. He settled on an organizing device that 
works quite well by alternating eyewitness accounts of the moments 
leading up to, during, and after the horrific crash with a more linear 
analysis of the forensic analysis of the plane’s mechanical failure. An 
effect of this two-part approach—which carries through nearly each of 
the book’s 24 chapters—is to take the reader to the center of the trauma 
over and over again in the words of survivors, only to relieve the stress 
of those vivid accounts with discussions of how and why the titanium 
in the lost engine failed and why the McDonnell-Douglas design for the 
DC-10 was flawed.  
 The effect of this rhythm is to produce a story that is at once in-
formative and compelling without ever resorting to melodrama. In the 
personally focused vignettes of life on the doomed plane, we are given 
a sense that every witness’s account is being heard and that every vic-
tim’s last moments are being accounted for in a dignified and meaningful 
way. In this mix, the science of metallurgy and engineering is explained 
in plain language, but in a way that unwinds the detective work needed 
to explain the miniscule but fatal flaw that led to this massive plane’s 
destruction. Achieving a tale of this scope and depth in such readable 


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