Under the Prophet in Utah the National Menace of a Political Priestcraft

O‘Higgins, Harvey Jerrold, 1876-1929Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
519K words
Chapters
52

Tags

English Originals ReligionPolitics MormonismSocial ObservationAmerican PoliticsPower GameCritique of ReligionSocial CritiqueDocumentary NarrativeTwentieth CenturyReligious PowerChurch and State

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Under the Prophet in Utah; the National Menace of a Political Priestcraft by Cannon et al.Author: O'Higgins, Harvey Jerrold, 1876-1929,Language: English, Class: F786: United States local history: New Southwest. Colorado River, Canyon, and Valley, Release Date: Dec 1, 2004

Editor's review

This book is a work of political and social criticism set in Utah, co-authored by Harvey Jerrold O'Higgins and Cannon and others, focusing on the phenomenon of a "political priestcraft" formed where local religious power and political operations intersect, and describing it as a national menace. As a public-domain eBook, it preserves the original texture of early twentieth-century American social-reform discourse and holds documentary value for the study of local politics, religion, and social relations in the American West. The book is strongly polemical, with a pronounced period stance and rhetorical style, and serves as a sample of social-critical writing from the American Progressive era. Readers are advised to place it in its specific historical context, to distinguish the authors' claims from verifiable historical fact, and to read it alongside related scholarship on Western American history and church-state relations in order to better appreciate its framing of issues and mode of argument.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the introduction or table of contents first to identify the authors' core arguments and targets of criticism before entering the main text.
  2. Prepare a timeline of Western American history and mark the events and institutional contexts mentioned in the book as you read.
  3. Excerpt key claims and note page numbers for easy cross-checking against later scholarship.
  4. If reading in English is difficult, first use a reliable translation or research overview to grasp the framework, then return to the original text.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Is this book a novel or a work of political criticism? The materials indicate that it is a work of political and social criticism, discussing religious power and political operations in Utah, not a work of fiction. The book is strongly polemical, and readers should treat it as a critical text situated in a specific historical context rather than as a neutral general history.
Can I read this book without a background in American history? You can, but it will be difficult. The book touches on Utah local politics, religious organizations, and early twentieth-century American social-reform discourse, and without background knowledge it is easy to misunderstand what the authors are referring to. It is advisable first to acquire basic knowledge of Western American history and church-state relations, or to read alongside a research overview.
What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition? This edition is a public-domain eBook, freely accessible and searchable, but it generally does not include a modern scholarly introduction or detailed annotations. Readers need to supplement historical background materials themselves and maintain a critical reading of the book's polemical statements.

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About the author

O‘Higgins, Harvey Jerrold, 1876-1929 Author

Harvey Jerrold O‘Higgins (1876–1929) is an author with limited publicly available biographical information, and two of his works are held in this collection. One representative work is *Under the Prophet in Utah: The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft*, whose title suggests a subject involving the intertwining of religious and political power in Utah, carrying a tone of social criticism. The other, *Old Clinkers: A Story of the New York Fire Department*, is set against the New York fire service and features a distinct regional and occupational background. The two works combine social issues with stories of a particular profession, written in a style that blends narrative with documentary observation. Because public sources are limited, details of his life, nationality, and education cannot be confirmed, and readers may come to know this author mainly through the subjects of his works.