This afternoon, renowned historian (and former T & S guest-blogger) Richard Bushman was the speaker at a meeting of the J Reuben Clark society in New York. The event was held at a reputable law firm in midtown. Brother Bushman discussed Joseph Smith and how politics was viewed in the early church. He suggested that the divide between politics and religion — and the related tension between republican values and prophetic values — has played an important role throughout the church’s history.
I attended with Mardell (for some of the time) and Indigo (for some of the time). The remarks were great, and there was a good Q & A session afterwards, the end of which I unfortunately had to miss because I was called back to work. I saw a lot of familiar faces there, including President Belnap, John Rather, Julie McAdams, plus some guy from another lds-blog. There were also a number of T & S readers and commenters in attendance. All in all, a very good presentation.
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Bushman in New York
8 Responses to Bushman in New York
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Neat, sounds like your JRCLS chapter has some great meetings.
Any word on the progress of his Joseph Smith biography?
If you’re going to use this respected forum to praise Bushman on the eve of the election, you should at least give equal time to Kerryman.
I read his book about JS and the early years of the restoration. I loved it! What was the title? It was about a year ago and I can’t remember. (I borrowed it from a friend)
It was “Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism” that you read. The real question is when Bushman’s full biographical treatment is going to be published. I have been looking forward to that for about ten years!
At the event, he said it would be out in (as I recall) spring of next year.
Kaimi’s right about the schedule for the book–sometime before summer next year is the target. Richard did announce a few weeks back that the whole manuscript–2500 pages–had just been delivered to the publisher, so, if the editors work quickly, it might be out by spring.
Just so that everyone doesn’t feel like they have to start doing weightlifting in order to carry around Richard’s book, that 2500 pages is double-spaced wordprocessed pages. The printed book will come in somewhere under 1000 pages. It will have the look and feel of those recent bestselling Founding Father biographies (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Founding Brothers, etc.). It will incorporate some updated material from JS and the Beginnings of Mormonism. The publisher will be Alfred Knopf which offers a lovely irony inasmuch as they were the first publishers of Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History.