Reviews 345 any war, the things fought over are rarely the things being fought over. In this war, the ostensible struggle is for water, land, space and the ‘salva tion’ of valuable cattle. Surely one can interpret the cattle as means to wealth which in turn lead to power and for most of us dullard souls what precisely is power but the ability to oppress, to order humanity about. (Thus cattle equals wealth equals power equals control of human cattle.) Fulton has grasp of the land that is a mystical relationship between him and the sky, the plants, the soil, the very sea-deep, sing-song, shifting volumes of silence that immerses all beneath it. (Reading it while ratracing within the megalopolis surely hurts one’s psyche; honest.) Where it isn’t straight poetry (“The nightwind sucked at the chimney and drew orange flames in blazing fits upwards while the same wind soughed against the house.”) ; it is almost haiku (“. . . the fire imparted a sense of security no man could deny. . . . ”); or multitudinous rumbling passages of poeticprose . There’s a brilliant ‘old-fashioned’ richness of description one doesn’t find much anymore. How could one wax poetic about pollutant skytoppers scraping away our innermost existence? Is one to appreciate being houndherded by cars? Is one to feel joy at realizing one’s bought-off fellows have made him meagre, puny, small? And, finally, where there is no space there is no nature, no god, no peace, no life, no love; there is only greed and eog-mania and death. Maybe if you read Fulton you’ll remember how it was primordially and you’ll weep. Along with the beautiful and brightly depicted passages of land there’s a lot of beautiful philosophy in Fulton’s work. Two excerpts will more than suffice to whet appetites: “The mathematician can never comprehend the unruly antics of the clown — thank god!” That is, that which he cannot comprehend he cannot bottle, bauble, bangle, brittle, break! And, “. . . love could indeed somehow win out, synthesize forces and breed away hate, though it did all this at its own pace.” To reasonable persons (like Fulton) this is self-evident. J. PYROS, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Richard H. Cracroft and Neal E. Lambert, editors. A Believing People: Literature of the Latter-day Saints. (Brigham Young University Press, 1974. xvi & 495; introduction, notes, index. $12.95; $9.95 pap.) This anthology of Mormon literature includes authors past and present writing in many genres: history, biography, letters, journals, sermons, essays, 346 Western American Literature poetry, fiction, and drama. The editors have sought to document the development of the orthodox faith of the Latter-day Saints. An expression of this faith rather than artistic competence or intellectual breadth is the quality common to the entire anthology. There is charm, vitality, and poignancy in many of these writings, especially those of a folk quality. Lucy Mack Smith’s account of her son’s heroic endurance of a childhood disease displays the Mormon will to survive. John Taylor’s narrative of the martyrdom of Joseph Smith amounts to a Mormon tragedy. A letter from Ellen Spencer Clawson reveals the loneliness of a plural wife whose husband’s attention is drawn to his latest bride. The picturesque diary of Priddy Meeks acquaints us with the early Mormon belief in peepstones and other magical paraphernalia. A letter from Brigham Young utters his serene faith and personal idiosyncrasy as in a kind of last will and testament he orders that his coffin be made big enough to allow elbow room should he want to turn in it. There is a similar vitality and a greater profundity in some of the writings of later, more sophisticated Mormon authors. Truman Madsen explains the existence of evil in an essay which possesses an admir able tone of objectivity and learning. Another excellent piece, a personal essay by Edward Geary, expresses a touching regret over the urbanization of the once rural domain of the Mormons. By other standards, of course, much included in this anthology is less than significant literature. Many of the expository writers of the Church, if we judge by these samples of history, biography, and sermons, are unwilling to...