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On September 7, 1857, a wagon train of pioneers on their way to California was ambushed at a place called Mountain Meadows in southwestern Utah. At first, the attackers appeared to be Indians, but in the five days of siege that followed, it became evident that they were not. As the settlers slowly resigned themselves to being overwhelmed, a large party of white men bearing a white flag approached the embattled camp and offered the survivors safe passage if they would lay down their arms. After they had done so, the “rescuers” separated the men, women and children into groups and marched them along the trail. Then, in response to a pre-arranged command, the supposed protectors turned on the settlers and shot them point-blank or slit their throats. Within three minutes, 140 people lay dead. Only about 15 or 20 children, whom the attackers deemed too young to bear witness against them, were spared. The killers were Mormons.

The Mountain Meadows massacre remains one of the most nettlesome events in the Mormon Church’s bloody history. Was the slaughter ordered by the church’s leader, Brigham Young, or was it the misguided action of his overzealous adherents? Award-winning journalist Sally Denton leaves little doubt that it was the former.

Instead of treating the incident as an aberration, in her compelling new book American Massacre, she places it in the context of a religious movement that owed much of its success to cultivating an us-against-them attitude among its members. The perception that any outsider might be an enemy of the faith made an atrocity like Mountain Meadows inevitable. Particularly effective in demonstrating how the national outcry against the massacre kept building until even the intractable Young had to give in to it, Denton has written a fascinating and thorough account of the tumultuous event and its aftermath. This is a superb piece of scholarship that reads like a novel.

No battle of the American Civil War has been more studied than Gettysburg. In recent years, historians have written hefty tomes analyzing merely one day of the three-day engagement. Talented biographers have examined the lives of general officers, field officers and common soldiers in blue and gray. The question will logically be asked, “Is there a need for yet another book about Gettysburg?” As Stephen W. Sears, the award-winning author of six previous books on the war, brilliantly demonstrates, there most certainly is. His gracefully written text presents the story of Robert E. Lee’s failed Pennsylvania campaign in all its complexity. Rather than debate the actions of one commander or another, or the wisdom of this or that flanking maneuver, Sears keeps his eye on the bigger picture, namely, what was at stake for both sides when Union and Confederate forces met in battle in July 1863? With more than 2,000 land engagements in the Civil War, how did Gettysburg come to be the costliest some 51,000 men were killed or wounded battle of the four-year conflict? Over the years, Sears writes, so much effort has been devoted to assigning blame for the Confederate defeat that “it is easy to lose sight of the victors.” He seeks therefore to give the Union commander, General George Gordon Meade, his historiographical due. Although absolutely colorless and virtually unknown, Meade was greatly respected by his fellow general officers when he was given command of the Army of the Potomac a scant four days before the battle at Gettysburg. Despite his victory over Lee, Meade received stinging criticism for allowing the Confederates to retreat across the Potomac. Abraham Lincoln himself believed that the capture of Lee’s army would have ended the war. Any serious student of the Civil War will want to keep this authoritative volume close at hand. Dr. Thomas Appleton is professor of history at Eastern Kentucky University.