Mormon Studies Review
Abstract
The complete diaries of David O. McKay, held in the special collections
of the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah,
run some forty thousand pages long. Such length seems appropriate
for the man who served as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints for nearly twenty of his ninety-six years, from 1951
to 1970. When he was born many Americans believed his church to be
a strange and threatening polygamous cult; when he died Mormons were widely celebrated as model Americans. These pages help us to
understand that change.
About fifteen thousand of those forty thousand pages are dated
entries. The rest are, according to editor Harvard Heath, meeting programs,
newspaper clippings, and other such ephemera. He also tells
us the diary is more a production of McKay’s longtime secretary Clare
Middlemiss than of McKay himself; perhaps half of its entries are in
her voice, and some in McKay’s own. Some dated entries also include
excerpts from other texts: minutes of meetings, transcripts of phone
conversations, and so on. All of this, Heath says, Middlemiss assembled
from her own notes and research, and from McKay’s dictation.
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Bowman, Matthew
(2020)
"Review: Harvard Heath, ed. Confidence amid Change: The Presidential Diaries of David O. McKay, 1951–1970. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 2018.,"
Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 7:
No.
1, Article 25.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol7/iss1/25