[audiobook] A Photographerrsquo;s Guide to Coloradorsquo;s National Parks and Monuments by Bob Maynard; Cindy Maynard at Arts-Photography

Description

For Mormons; the second coming of Christ and the subsequent millennium will arrive only when the earth has been perfected through the building of a model world called Zion. Throughout the nineteenth century the Latter-day Saints followed this vision; creating a material world—first in Missouri and Illinois but most importantly and permanently in Utah and surrounding western states—that serves as a foundation for understanding their concept of an ideal universe.Building Zion is; in essence; the biography of the cultural landscape of western LDS settlements. Through the physical forms Zion assumed; it tells the life story of a set of Mormon communities—how they were conceived and constructed and inhabited—and what this material manifestation of Zion reveals about what it meant to be a Mormon in the nineteenth century. Focusing on a network of small towns in Utah; Thomas Carter explores the key elements of the Mormon cultural landscape: town planning; residences (including polygamous houses); stores and other nonreligious buildings; meetinghouses; and temples. Zion; we see; is an evolving entity; reflecting the church’s shift from group-oriented millenarian goals to more individualized endeavors centered on personal salvation and exaltation. Building Zion demonstrates how this cultural landscape draws its singularity from a unique blending of sacred and secular spaces; a division that characterized the Mormon material world in the late nineteenth century and continues to do so today.