Review: John Sillito. B. H. Roberts: A Life in the Public Arena. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2021. & Val Holley. Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, Scoundrel. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020.

Authors

Dave Hall

Keywords

B. H. Roberts, biography, public life

Abstract

Forty years ago, I picked up a copy of Truman Madsen’s biography of B. H. Roberts, Defender of the Faith. About the same time, I also checked out of a college library Frank Cannon’s Under the Prophet in Utah. Even with my knowledge of Mormon history in its infancy, it was clear that these were very different men. Now two recent biographies have reaffirmed that point. In B. H. Roberts: A Life in the Public Arena, John Sillito does not attempt to provide a comprehensive treatment of Roberts: his focus is not on Roberts’s contributions to Mormon thought or theology, or on his private and family life—although he refers readers to others who deal with those issues. Instead, he attempts to provide a one-volume account of Roberts’s public life in its many manifestations. In doing so, he wants the reader to “hear Roberts’s voice and the voice of his contemporaries,” and gain a greater appreciation of Roberts’s remarkable, “even inspiring” journey (xii, xiii).

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Hall, Dave (2023) "Review: John Sillito. B. H. Roberts: A Life in the Public Arena. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2021. & Val Holley. Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, Scoundrel. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020.," Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 10: No. 1, Article 24.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol10/iss1/24