front cover of Dance with the Bear
Dance with the Bear
The Joe Rosenblatt Story
Norman Rosenblatt
University of Utah Press, 2013
This carefully researched and illuminating biography recounts a pivotal period in Utah’s history as revealed by the life of businessman, community activist, and statesman Joe Rosenblatt. After successfully building Eimco Corporation, his manufacturing and construction business, into an industry leader—and, by the 1950s, Utah’s largest privately owned company—Rosenblatt spent the better part of his time following his retirement in 1963 as a devoted public servant. He served as chairman of the “Little Hoover Commission,” charged by Utah governor Calvin Rampton in 1965 to investigate the operation of the executive branch of the state’s government. He would go on to serve on more than fifty boards and commissions.

The “Little Hoover Commission” was modeled after the 1947 initiative of President Harry Truman, who created the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of Government to recommend administrative changes and appointed former president Herbert Hoover to chair it. Rosenblatt, a perceptive and outspoken figure, brought a much-needed dose of urgency and pragmatism to the Utah process and formulated a number of far-reaching suggestions to the legislature—many of which were adopted and still exist to this day. His work with the commission coupled with his later role on the San Francisco Federal Reserve Board did much to modernize Utah. Rosenblatt’s legacy as a perpetual champion of the community is further exemplified by his role as cultural conduit between Salt Lake’s Jewish community and the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

This readable work will serve as an integral addition to Utah business and political history, enriching the library of anyone looking for an engaging story of a remarkable and transformative figure.
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Defender
The Life of Daniel H. Wells
Quentin Thomas Wells
Utah State University Press, 2022

Defender is the first and only scholarly biography of Daniel H. Wells, one of the important yet historically neglected leaders among the nineteenth-century Mormons—leaders like Heber C. Kimball, George Q. Cannon, and Jedediah M. Grant. An adult convert to the Mormon faith during the Mormons’ Nauvoo period, Wells developed relationships with men at the highest levels of the church hierarchy, emigrated to Utah with the Mormon pioneers, and served in a series of influential posts in both church and state.

Wells was known especially as a military leader in both Nauvoo and Utah—he led the territorial militia in four Indian conflicts and a confrontation with the US Army (the Utah War). But he was also the territorial attorney general and obtained title to all the land in Salt Lake City from the federal government during his tenure as the mayor of Salt Lake City. He was Second Counselor to Brigham Young in the LDS Church's First Presidency and twice served as president of the Mormon European mission. Among these and other accomplishments, he ran businesses in lumbering, coal mining, manufacturing, and gas production; developed roads, ferries, railroads, and public buildings; and presided over a family of seven wives and thirty-seven children.

Wells witnessed and influenced a wide range of consequential events that shaped the culture, politics, and society of Utah in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Using research from relevant collections, sources in public records, references to Wells in the Joseph Smith papers, other contemporaneous journals and letters, and the writings of Brigham Young, Quentin Thomas Wells has created a serious and significant contribution to Mormon history scholarship.

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Desert Water
The Future of Utah's Water Resources
Hal Crimmel
University of Utah Press, 2014
Hal Crimmel has brought the findings of science together with the experienced voices of environmental social scientists, humanists, and activists to provide perspective on Utah water issues. The matters discussed are relevant beyond this one state, as similar conditions and concerns, especially over supply and demand in the face of demographic and climate change, exist throughout the West. Some of the essays are scientific and analytical; others literary and personal. Together they draw attention to problems that Utah residents and policy makers must address but also emphasize ways to build solutions. Desert Water will help citizens, policy makers, and anyone interested in Utah’s water supply and use—as everyone in the state should be—understand the real challengesand ethicsinvolved in managing this vital, finite resource. By awareness, these essays should create a sense of urgency for finding workable solutions. 
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Dinosaurs Of Utah
Second Edition
Frank DeCourten
University of Utah Press, 2013
Since the late 1800s, when professional fossil hunters vied with each other to bring the largest and most complete specimens to the museum market, Utah has been one of the most fertile grounds for dinosaur discovery. Because rock from the Mesozoic era covers more than 25,000 square miles in Utah, the state is a natural museum of the great age of dinosaurs. The presence of sites such as Dinosaur National Park and the Cleveland- Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry underline Utah’s ongoing paleontological significance. There are probably more paleontologists residing and working in Utah now than at any time in the past, and the state even has an official dinosaur, the Allosaurus.

Dinosaurs of Utah is an ambitious book bridging the gap between the voluminous technical literature on Utah’s Mesozoic era and the numerous publications that describe dinosaurs at the elementary level. “Utah” dinosaurs are presented here as part of the Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystems that evolved in the Colorado Plateau region and are discussed in the context of the changing landscapes, environments, and biota recorded in the geological record.

More than one hundred of author Frank DeCourten’s meticulous line drawings illustrate fossil remains and various features of dinosaur anatomy, as do five stunning paintings by Carel Brest van Kempen. More than forty color landscape photographs by John Telford and Frank DeCourten show modern geologic contexts in most parts of the state and emphasize the dynamic nature of the region’s geologic history. There is also a series of detailed maps, including several new to this edition, that show the tremendous topographical shifts that occurred within the Mesozoic era from the early Triassic to the late Cretaceous periods, a span of over 175 million years.

This second edition of Dinosaurs of Utah enlivens our understanding of these amazing vanished creatures by explaining them and their world to us. It moves beyond the often superficial representations that have been so prevalent and more accurately portrays the variety of dinosaurs that once roamed the region now known as Utah.

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The Disappearances
A Story of Exploration, Murder, and Mystery in the American West
Scott Thybony
University of Utah Press, 2016
In 1935, during the wind-swept years of the Dust Bowl, three people went missing on separate occasions in the rugged canyon country of southeastern Utah, a place “wild, desolate, mysterious.” A thirteen-year old girl, Lucy Garrett, was tricked into heading west with the man who had murdered her father under the pretense of reuniting with him. At the same time, a search was underway for Dan Thrapp, a young scientist on leave from the American Museum of Natural History. Others were scouring the same region for an artist, Everett Ruess, who had disappeared into “the perfect labyrinth.” 

Intrigued by this unusual string of coincidental disappearances, Scott Thybony set out to learn what happened. His investigations took him from Island in the Sky to Skeleton Mesa, from Texas to Tucson, and from the Green River to the Red. He traced the journey of Lucy Garrett from the murder of her father to her dramatic courtroom testimony. Using the pages of an old journal he followed the route of Dan Thrapp as he crossed an expanse of wildly rugged country with a pair of outlaws. Thrapp’s story of survival in an unforgiving land is a poignant counterpoint to the fate of the artist Everett Ruess, which the New York Times has called “one of the most enduring mysteries of the modern West.” Thybony draws on extensive research and a lifetime of exploration to create a riveting story of these three lives.
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Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon
Suffragist, Senator, Plural Wife
Constance L. Lieber
Signature Books, 2022
Martha Hughes Cannon (1857–1932) may best be known as the first female state senator in the United States, elected in Utah in 1896, nearly a quarter century before most women in the country could vote. She was also a suffragist, physician, gifted speaker, plural wife, faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and mother of three. This short biography examines what drove Cannon to accomplish so much. Following two periods of self-imposed exile to avoid prosecution for polygamy, and a subsequent career in partisan politics, she died in California, surrounded by her children and grandchildren but virtually forgotten by the larger world. She had much to say during her lifetime and has much to say to us today about persevering in spite of adversity. Constance Lieber chronicles the important story of one of the American West’s and Mormonism’s most intriguing characters.
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