Megan Sanborn Jones's study of nineteenth-century anti-Mormon melodramas fills a significant void in the study of American popular culture. The uncritical bashing of Mormons in the American mainstream media continues to be a constant feature of our culture, and Jones's book does a fine job of examining the ways in which this tradition reflects the anxieties of those who participate in this activity more than it reflects the Mormon community itself.

Jones orients her study around the concepts of “alterity, identity, and representation” (2) as developed by cultural theorists such as Foucault, de Certeau, Bhaba, and Levinas, and particularly around the idea that “the forceful exclusion/exorcism of the Other is an act of identity formation of the self” (2). The book's central thesis, which is rooted in these ideas, is that the various plays involved in the study, all written between 1850 and 1890, work to articulate a “true” American identity by articulating the ways in which Mormons were “un-American.”

The introduction and first chapter of Jones's book serve to establish a particular view of American culture out of which she argues that these plays emerge. Chapter 1, “The Christian Melodramatic Mode,” argues for a broad view of nineteenth-century American culture that is highly “melodramatic” in many important ways, particularly in its approach to religion. While the enormous dynamism and diversity of religious movements during this period makes the development of any sort of unifying argument a risky endeavor, Jones's claim sets the stage for what she sees as “a fascinating overlap between the theatrical and religious performance in the nineteenth century” (47).

Chapter 2, “Rapists: The Sexual Fantasy of Polygamy,” begins directly to develop the book's central thesis. Here Jones insightfully analyzes a number of different ways in which anti-Mormon playwrights create hypersexualized scenarios casting most of the women involved into the role of the hapless victim. Jones nicely articulates how each example serves to articulate and reify mainstream nineteenth-century American norms of femininity. Of particular interest is Jones's discussion of the ways in which the issue of women's suffrage is handled in anti-Mormon melodramas: as Jones demonstrates, playwrights used fictionalized visions of Mormon culture to assuage their own anxieties about this growing national movement. The fact that Utah granted suffrage to women a full half century before this right was realized nationally is twisted and manipulated by playwrights in a number of ways, most of which have more to do with the playwrights' concerns about women's suffrage in their own communities than with what was actually happening in Utah.

Chapter 3, “Murderers: The Necessity of Honorable Violence,” is oriented primarily around the paradox of America as a nation of peace-loving people who constantly use violence to defend their ideals. Here Jones uses examples from the plays in her study to articulate two different forms of violence: dishonorable violence, which is typically associated with the actions of Mormon characters, and honorable violence, which is used to counteract the former. Of particular value in this chapter is the discussion of the recurring role of “Danite” characters (members of a secret society of murderers, bent on avenging the death of Joseph Smith). Jones clearly demonstrates how these characters (for the actual existence of which there is no evidence during the period in question) were used by playwrights in order to justify, and even to compel, acts of heroic violence from other characters. One can easily imagine why the expression of this sort of moral clarity might have been of immediate importance to audiences that had lived through the divisiveness of the Civil War, and whose nation was continuing to wage a campaign of violence against Native American tribes. In defining the Mormon community as one that indulged in acts of dishonorable violence, Jones claims that audiences could, in return, rest assured that their own identity was solidly connected only to acts of honorable violence.

The book's final chapter, “Turks: Appropriating Ethnicity,” argues that many anti-Mormon melodramas used preexisting, negative, ethnic stereotypes as a means of rapidly defining Mormons as a dangerous “Other” standing in clear opposition to the American “norm.” Playwrights conflated the form of polygamy practiced by the Mormon community in the mid-nineteenth century and that practiced by some Islamic communities in North Africa and the Middle East during the same period. Jones goes on to articulate the ways in which racialized characteristics, associated in the West with “Turks,” were woven into portrayals of some Mormon characters. Jones's work here is largely successful, yet, given the fact that the othering of cultural groups in American melodramas was remarkably widespread, it is curious that Jones does not spend more time comparing the plays in her study to others from the period that perform the same sort of cultural work based, for example, on the defamation of blacks, Asians, Irish, and Jews.

This book's obvious value for scholars and historians aside, Jones's use throughout of a broad-spectrum “American identity” can be problematic, obscuring the profound heterogeneity of mid- to late nineteenth-century America. Her nationwide approach also obviates opportunities for more region-specific discussion of the impetus for, and ramifications of, anti-Mormon plays. A more targeted analysis of the social conditions in the cities and regions that saw performances of these plays might have enabled Jones to produce more nuanced discussions of local social anxieties framing their productions. The book's national focus also tends to lead to a number of overly broad generalizations, such as Jones's assertion that in popular culture portrayals of the western territories during the late nineteenth century, “concerns about the threat of violence were centered on” the activities of the Mormons in Utah (83). Depending on one's social status and where one lived, a late nineteenth-century American's “concerns about the threat of violence” in the western territories might just as easily have “centered on” conflicts with Native Americans, Mexicans, Irish, British, Russians, or Chinese, all of whom also figured prominently in the popular culture of the day.

These reservations aside, Jones has written a book that presents an understudied area of popular American theatre in a productive and intelligent fashion. Jones's use of cultural theory is insightful, and serves to expose and undercut “normalized” concepts about Mormons that continue to pervade in American culture.