Among the Mormons: Historic Accounts by Contemporary Observers

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958. First edition. Hardcover. Very good/very good minus. SIGNED. 482pp. Octavo [24 cm] Forest green cloth covered boards with a decorative gilt stamped title on the spine. In a price-clipped dust jacket, with mild rubbing, numerous light stains, and periodic small open edge tears. The largest open tear is along the top edge of the front panel, measuring just under 1 x 1". There is also an old price sticker on the front inside flap. Inscribed by A. R. Mortensen to the California historian, John W. Caughey, on the front free endpaper. His bookplate is on the front pastedown. From the Editor's Foreword- "Travelers' tales fed an imagination hungry to hear dime-novel adventures, and did much to produce the popular image of the Mormons at worst degraded, at best as God-fearing and industrious but deluded fanatics. Curious observers sought them out early. Hardly a travel book about America after 1830 failed to mention them.