Rating: 
Summary: Justice for the Mountain Meadows victims
Review: I believe this well-written account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 -- a brief chapter in Mormonism as it parallels with Americans' westward expansion -- is the first justice the 120 victims and their descendants have had bestowed upon them. The incredible power wielded by the LDS church has strong-armed authories for 150 years from letting the truth be told. Ms. Denton has threaded all the details into a fine historical account of a disgusting murderous rampage. This is a tragedy that will never be laid to rest so long as the Mormon church denies Brigham Young's involvement ... for which all "prophets" and "presidents" from Young and thereafter should be eternally ashamed.
Rating: 
Summary: Its almost like trilogy......
Review: I found Sally Denton's American Massacre to be a fine piece of history writing. She have written well, the cause and effect that initiated one of the greatest atrocities in American history. I'll be frank here, if you are a member of LDS, you will probably find this book to be offensive and defies all you were ever told about this incident. That is too bad but I guess the book was written for rest of the world. Denton make it clear that it was the white Mormons who without mercy, cruelly butchered 120 men, women and children, under the flag of truce on a pretension of a honorable surrender. What make it worst was that even if Bingham Young, prophet and leader of LDS didn't ordered the killing, he took an active hand in protecting the murderers, covering it up, making him just as guilty as those who committed the foul deed. This doesn't make Young much of a prophet which was why LDS today decries any effort to bring up this old atrocity. So much of their faith depends on Young being a prophet of God instead of Satan. Nazi-like style of massacre also don't painted the white Mormon milita very well either which was another reason why this church like this entire incident swept under the carpet. If not, then let the blame go to the Indians and to the victims. These were Mormons' excuses even to 1990s. The author rises a super interesting question here. Why did Young sent a messenger telling his Mormon fellowers not to harm the wagon train. Well, anyone who watches too many Colombo episodes can tell you why....its called covering your rear end. Let us face it, since Utah at that time was run as a theocracy with Young at the top, nobody will ever do anything this big without some form of approval from above. Mormons were too well discipline to take things into their own hands. As Denton revealed, blood atonement for anyone stepping out of bound provided that discipline. The author tell stories of Mormons who were badly beaten or killed for helping out that wagaon train - either out Christain charity or greed. Wiping out an entire wagaon train was too much responsiblity for any one at a local level, some sort of approval must come from Salt Lake City and guess who resides there. Denton turned many of this into a working theory, perhaps in modern time, enough to bring Young to a grand jury. This overall, proves to be an important book but if there was a weakness, its not as detail as you want. Thus, I believed that this book, along with works by Juanita Brooks and Will Bagley, form a trilogy of books which should be an standard reference for Mountain Meadow Masacre for many years to come.
Rating:
Summary: lordroots' review
Review: I found this review to be helpful in determining if I should buy the book. So far have not ordered it, but am considering that I might. However, I believe "lordroot" should use spellcheck, as there were some awesome mistakes
Rating:
Summary: lordroots' review
Review: I found this review to be helpful in determining if I should buy the book. So far have not ordered it, but am considering that I might. However, I believe "lordroot" should use spellcheck, as there were some awesome mistakes
Rating: 
Summary: Where's the footnotes and professionalism?
Review: I read a lot of primary medical research and am used to relying on footnotes. I got sick of all the paragraphs that made statements but had no supporting references. Even if I don't look them all up, I like to see that references are available. I couldn't stand it any more and gave up. I took to heart the comments in the other review titled "Bagley's Blood of the Prophets a Better Investment". It didn't help that I listened to a local radio interview wherein the author was asked what her biases were. Her response? "I have none" (the interview was done by a Salt Lake City public radio station in July 2003). Everyone has biases, and if this author doesn't realize that, she has no way of taking those biases into account to write an objective book, which she claimed to have done. This book contains this author's views, which though it may be "readable" certainly was not satisfying to me.
Rating: 
Summary: Read with Care
Review: I read this work slowly and in pieces. I found the story profoundly disturbing. I could take it only in small doses. It is hard to imagine middle class Americans behaving toward each other in such profoundly evil ways.I have no doubt this story happened for real in pretty much the way presented in this book. Thank you.
Rating: 
Summary: The other side
Review: I think that it is very interesting that the author, Ms. Denton, has somehow found a way to interpret the very contradictory documents relating to this tradgedy. She admits herself in this book that there is a "lack of evidence" - yet she continues to tell the story as if she were there, picking and choosing which documents she feels are "factual" - all of which implicate Brigham Young - then prophet of the church. Could she have a predjudice born of a father who was dissatisfied with this church and raised his children on bitterness and hard feelings? She even tells the story of her father stopping at Mountain Meadows everytime they passed it to tell his children of the story - Mormons who killed women and children. Where did her father get his information? Overall, I think it is a poor excuse for an accurate look at this particular event. Thank you for an interesting fiction read though.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps our finest author of true life.
Review: I was mesmerized by Denton's authorship of "The Bluegrass Conspiracy." With this most recent work, words are hard to find to desribe what a powerhouse Sally Denton is to the world of literature.
Her books belong beside the works of Krakauer and Keneally. Keep them coming, Ms. Denton.
Rating:
Summary: Eye opening
Review: I would heartily recommend "American Massacre." I found
this book very enlightening and absorbing. I had heard about
the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and had read another book
about it, which quite frankly, was a little obtuse and
difficult to follow. Not so with this book. I found the
background on the Mormon Church and Brigham Young in particular
very interesting, and he and the church certainly did not come
off depicted in the image we had been taught in school! Being
from Upstate New York, were lived quite near where Mormonism
had its beginnings. This tragic episode is a dark chapter in
the history of the Latter Day Saints, one which they would
obviously like to forget. It won't happen if people read this
excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Obstruction of Justice
Review: In April 1858, Brigham Young assured Utah governor Alfred Cumming that Cumming need not conduct an investigation of the Mountain Meadows Massacre because Young himself would see to it that the crime was solved. "It would not be the only time an investigation into the tragedy was started and stopped, compromised and forsaken," writes Sally Denton (p. 182). "The pattern would continue for the next century and a half." Denton undertook American Massacre to show that the Mormon Church is as guilty of obstruction of justice today as it was in the nineteenth century. Yet the biggest surprise in the book is that Denton pulls some of the earlier punches she threw in her October 2001 American Heritage article and her May 24, 2003, N.Y. Times op-ed piece. In the Times, she scolded the church for refusing to accept responsibility and cited examples of other churches that have apologized for past injustices during the Holocaust, era of slavery, etc. But American Massacre itself seems to shy away from such ringing pronouncements. As well, in American Heritage Denton seemed to accept the Salt Lake Tribune's claim that historian Juanita Brooks had actually burned a few "incriminating" Mountain Meadows documents. This is a serious charge to level against Brooks, a known battler for truth, and having bruited it, Denton ought to have substantiated it or laid it to rest. Yet the book is silent on this. Denton's non-Mormon status works both for and against her. On the one hand, because she cannot be excommunicated, she wrote with freedom from fear of ecclesiastical censure (a luxury Brooks did not have). On the other hand, despite her admirable research, Mormonism remains for her a "second language" and she makes a few assertions about its history and culture that, without better documentation, are subject to dispute. Did the Scandinavian proportion of the Mormon immigrant population really exceed that of the British? And in the 1850s, was the role of Satan in the Mormon temple ritual really improvised, rather than the undeviating adherence to a script that it is today? It is hardly possible for a single book on Mountain Meadows to be definitive, and American Massacre should certainly be studied by all who want to learn more about the tragedy. Perhaps the book's major contribution is its bolstering of our knowledge of three non-Mormon men, Capt. John W. Gunnison, Col. Thomas L. Kane, and Judge John Cradlebaugh, and their connection to the ghastly events at Mountain Meadows. Gunnison's 1852 book, "The Mormons," exacerbated the tension between Utah and the rest of the country. Kane's influence in Washington, in Denton's view, deflected both federal investigation of and military retribution for the massive crime. Cradlebaugh, perhaps more than any other investigator, ferreted out much truth about the Mormon perpetrators of the massacre. Mountain Meadows scholarship is inseparable from Brigham Young scholarship; thus someone of Denton's stature should tackle a full-length biography of Young and deal, at last, with issues which no Mormon author has had the courage to face. American Massacre points out the contrast between Young's vast wealth and his followers' dire poverty, a disparity exacerbated by the expense of crossing the plains. It also hints at the Alpha-male sexuality underlying Young's appropriation of choice brides whom lower-ranking men had already claimed. No honest biography of Young can fail to confront either these issues or his legacy of obstruction of justice.
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