Utah Westerners

October Announcement for the Utah Westerners

October 10, 2016 at 1:55 pm kenttschanz Leave a comment

Utah, Nels Anderson, and the World War I Experience
Kent Powell

With the Centennial Anniversary of the United States entry into World War I less than six months away, we have asked Kent Powell to talk about two recent University of Utah Press books which he has edited on Utahns and World War I. The first book, Utah and the Great War: The Beehive State and the World War I Experience is a collection of seventeen articles that look at military involvement, the impact on communities, women, Native Americans, German-Americans and other immigrants, conscientious objectors, flu epidemic victims, and the battle over the League of Nations. The second book, Nels Anderson’s World War I Diary, is a remarkable contemporary account of military service on the Western Front in France and during the American occupation of Germany after the war. An adopted Utahn, Nels Anderson became an internationally recognized sociologist. He is known to students of Utah history for his path breaking book, Desert Saints: The Mormon Frontier in Utah published by the University of Chicago Press in 1942 and his influence on prominent Utah historians Juanita Brooks and Dale Morgan.

Allan Kent Powell grew up in Huntington, Emery County, Utah, and earned a Ph.D. in History from the University of Utah. In 2013 he retired as managing editor of the Utah Historical Quarterly and as senior state historian at the Utah State Historical Society where he was employed for forty-four years. His most recent book, Utah and the Great War: The Beehive State and the World War I Experience, was just published by the University of Utah Press. He edited Nels Anderson’s World War I Diary, which received the Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Writing Award for 2013. Other edited books include: A German Odyssey: Helmut Horner the Journal of a German Prisoner of War, Utah Remembers World War II, the Utah History Encyclopedia and the twenty-nine volume Utah Centennial County History Series. He has authored numerous articles and several books including The Next Time We Strike: Labor in the Eastern Utah Coal Fields and Splinters of a Nation: German Prisoners of War in Utah. He has been a member of the Utah Westerners since 2004 and in 2014 was made a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society.

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