Concerning Utah’s statehood story, the oft heard quote comes to mind, attributed to German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who said: “laws and sausage, if they are to be enjoyed, should never be watched made.” Lyman’s book argues for the opposite: knowing the stories behind political actions are essential to a vibrant and strong democracy. Lyman’s “sausage making” history reveals many significant historical insights useful to contemporary life in Utah. It is also a complex, elusive story, that has been largely untold until now.
Perhaps no other historian knows as much, or can tell the story as well as Edward Leo Lyman. Like the story he is telling, it took him almost fifty years to fully understand the extent of this story.
Enough years have passed (for many Utahns the history of the 1847 pioneers has always trumped Utah’s statehood story), and enough new scholarship has been completed, to finally tell a complete “sausage making” story about Utah’s elusive statehood quest.
Podcast #1 of 2 -- Topics Discussed:
Concerning Utah’s statehood story, the oft heard quote comes to mind, attributed to German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who said: “laws and sausage, if they are to be enjoyed, should never be watched made.” Lyman’s book argues for the opposite: knowing the stories behind political actions are essential to a vibrant and strong democracy. Lyman’s “sausage making” history reveals many significant historical insights useful to contemporary life in Utah. It is also a complex, elusive story, that has been largely untold until now.
Perhaps no other historian knows as much, or can tell the story as well as Edward Leo Lyman. Like the story he is telling, it took him almost fifty years to fully understand the extent of this story.
Enough years have passed (for many Utahns the history of the 1847 pioneers has always trumped Utah’s statehood story), and enough new scholarship has been completed, to finally tell a complete “sausage making” story about Utah’s elusive statehood quest.
Podcast #1 of 2 -- Topics Discussed: