It is daunting presuming to review the work of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. She is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, a Harvard professor, and, perhaps most enduringly, the one who wrote:
“Well-behaved women seldom make history…”
In A House Full of Females, Professor Ulrich for the first time puts forward a scholarly book that addresses Mormon history.
I first heard of this years ago, when a friend with a sister in Professor Ulrich’s Boston congregation told me Professor Ulrich was writing “the definitive” book about Joseph Smith. As I had by that time completed my Faithful Joseph series of blog posts, I reached out to Professor Ulrich.
I wrote: “My friend’s sister, your friend, mentioned you have just submitted the manuscript for a book on Joseph Smith and polygamy, the definitive book, she asserted. I don’t know much more than an assertion that there was a lot less sex than most people assume and that none of the children are Joseph’s.”
Professor Ulrich graciously replied, but informed me someone must have misunderstood:
“I do think it significant that there were so few births to plural wives before Joseph’s death, but my book does not offer any new information on Joseph, Eliza, or John C. Bennett.” Continue reading
