Home >> Awards >> 2003 Best Book Award
The John Whitmer Historical Association is proud to announce that a new cooperative effort has been reached enhancing and enriching the Best Book Award presented annually. Through the generosity of the Smith-Pettit Foundation of Salt Lake City, a grant of $1,000 will be given to the author of the book judged to be the best book written and published during the current year. This began with the 2001 award.
At JWHA 2003, Will Bagley spoke on "Only the Truth is Good Enough": The Historiography of a Massacre |
The Smith-Pettit Foundation is a private foundation dedicated, through its activities, to supporting scholarly Mormon studies. Gary Bergera, a member of JWHA since 1987 is the new managing director of the foundation. JWHA is grateful for the kind and generous offer making this award possible.
Our "Award Year" runs from July 1 through June 30 of the following year. As a result of the generosity of the Smith Petit Foundation, the annual award for the Best Book in Latter Day Saint history now carries an award of $1,000.00, in addition to the plaque.
Last year the Award went to Glen Leonard for his Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise.
There were three strong contenders this year. One was Grant Palmer's An Insider's View of Mormon Origins. A fine book, which is well-worth our praise. One committee member suggested we give Grant a special award for "courage" for the honest way he dealt with many sensitive issues. Another very worthy contender was Gary Bergera's Conflict in the Quorums.
The award for the best book in Mormon history for this past year goes to Will Bagley for his Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows.
As Tom Alexander said in his BYU Studies review, Will has done more research on the Mountain Meadows Massacre than anyone else to date. Lawrence Coates writes in another review in the BYU Studies that "Bagley's compelling writing style...rivets the reader's attention quickly on the main topics surrounding the massacre." For giving us a fresh and detailed look at this most troubling incident in the Mormon past, we owe a great debt to Will Bagley and hereby award him the annual Smith Petit Award for the Best Book in Latter Day Saint history.
Will Bagley is an independent historian and newspaper columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune. He is editor of the Arthur H. Clark Co. series "Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier." The Western Writers of America gave his latest work, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, this year's Spur Award for best non-fiction book on a nineteenth-century subject.
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