I posted Arrington's Brigham Young: American Moses (U of Illinois, 1986) as my February 2005 Book of the Month (see upper left). A nice summary of the book is Arrington's Encyclopedia of Mormonism bibliographical essay on Brigham Young, posted online here. "Colonizer, territorial governor, and President of the Church" is how Arrington describes him in the opening line of the essay. In the early years he was a skilled carpenter and a dedicated monogamous husband to his first wife, doing most of the domestic work for several years after she contracted tuberculosis around 1828 (she passed away in September 1832, shortly after the Youngs joined the LDS Church).
He led the straggling and disoranized Saints from Missouri to Illinois in 1838, then again led a larger group from Illinois out into the barely-charted wilderness of Western America in 1846, and made the passage back and forth from the Plains (Iowa and Nebraska) to Utah several times in the following years. He saw more of the America of his day than just about any national leader except John C. Fremont. He went west twenty years before Horace Greely ever said "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." Not only did Brigham go west, he took five thousand people with him.
A nice thing about the book is that Arrington seems to highlight the parts of Brigham's life that do not overlap with the standard 1830-44 LDS history story that most are somewhat familiar with. Which would include (1) the mission to England with the Twelve; (2) the move from Missouri to Nauvoo, while Joseph was stuck in Liberty Jail for 6 months; (3) exiting Nauvoo in 1846 and heading out West. Arrington gets to the "heading West" part within a hundred pages; in a sense, "Brigham's story" really starts in 1844, as "Joseph's story" ends.
Posted by: Dave | Jan 27, 2005 at 10:22 AM
For me, the most intriguing part of Brigham's life is the rise to be the next president of the Church and the showdown with Sidney Rigdon. I wonder at what point Brigham realized what the next step for Church leadership was to be.
Posted by: Steve Evans | Jan 27, 2005 at 10:43 AM