This book starts with a very nice statement about Eugene England. His biographer, Terryl Givens, writes that England was "known to thousands of friends and colleagues and students as 'the most Christ-like man I knew'" (p. 1). What a remarkable claim! I don’t know who exactly Givens is quoting here, but it reminds me of Lavina Fielding Anderson calling LDS historian Leonard Arrington "quite possibly the best human being of his generation".

Later on, Givens says: "One word more than any other characterizes [England's] aspirational energies to build consensus and cooperation: dialogue" (p. 63). It’s hard to know how much work the word "aspirational" is doing here. A student is quoted as saying that in the Englands’ home there "was an energy of wanting to know what you thought, what your feelings were, what your struggles were . . ." In 1980 when I was a high school senior, I was one of a couple dozen BYU scholarship candidates who were shepherded from our temporary lodgings in Deseret Towers to the Englands' Provo home where we listened to England argue against the Church’s traditional understanding of plural marriage. It’s been quite a while, and I was kind of in a daze at the time, but I don’t recall there being much opportunity to disagree with England that night. Clearer in my memory is a fireside talk England gave in my Salt Lake ward in 1991 in the run-up to the First Gulf War. I thought England’s talk was baldly political and inappropriate for the setting. Those of us who disagreed with England were not given equal time to rebut his arguments. I ended up sending him a letter outlining my disagreements. I never heard back from him.

On page 165 of this book, Gene Kovalenko says of England: "I’ve never seen him angry." That might be true, but Givens certainly portrays England as angry quite a lot. As one of many examples, on page 228 Givens describes how England rose "in dramatic outrage" and "declared in a fury" how unhappy he was with the Strengthening Church Members Committee.

Then on page 183, LDS historian Philip Barlow is quoted to the effect that England "never had a thought he didn’t write about". That's pretty close to the classic backhanded compliment: "He never had an unexpressed thought." Was that intentional?

Although it was commissioned by England’s widow (and in spite of its words of praise for England that I’ve quoted so far), this biography would properly be described as warts-and-all. Among other things, Givens accuses England again and again of the most extraordinary cluelessness. Because of this, even England’s strongest detractor is likely to be feeling some sympathy for him by the time they reach the end of the book.

As I checked the notes I jotted down while reading this biography, I was a little surprised to see that I seemed to have taken issue with Givens more than I had with England himself. Unlike England, Givens seems to understand the maxim "Never let them see you sweat", and Givens' cool academic demeanor and relative detachedness may be a partial explanation for the fact that he seems to be much more appreciated by Church leaders than England was.

It seems to me that when promoting his own controversial opinions, Givens tends to quote a few people who agree with him and none that disagree with him and leave it at that. In this book, he has plenty of endnotes to tell us precisely which page of England’s journal is being referred to, but not many to justify his own broad claims. On page 45, Givens says that "Joseph Smith bridled at orthodoxy tests" and presents a quote from Joseph to that effect, but Givens doesn’t place that statement in the context that he must know exists. There’s nothing about the many disciplinary actions that Joseph took, and certainly no mention that Joseph said that those who disliked being corrected by him when they "erred in doctrine" would need to "lump it". Givens should be given credit for not hiding the fact that in 1973 England wrote: "I am convinced that ecclesiastically the Church is doing what the Lord has directed" in regard to the priesthood ban (p. 88). But it’s too bad that neither here nor elsewhere in his writings does Givens seem willing to address David O. McKay’s relevant revelatory claims, which seem to back England up.

There are typos, some of which make me think that the proofreader was not LDS: "College of San Matteo" (p. 65), "Steward Udall" (p. 80), "seminar and institute staffing" (p. 101), "one who’s opinion and influence" (p. 129), "Deseret Books" (p. 167), "Armando Calladares" (p. 176), "Smith’s polygeny" (p. 281), and "Bryan Watterman" (p. 316).

Finally, some miscellaneous comments on what Givens wrote:

1. On page 27: "In 1954, sixty countries hosted LDS missionaries, with Fiji and South Korea added to the mix the year England departed." I actually spent some time trying to figure out why Merry Old England stopped accepting LDS missionaries!
2. On page 31: "Charlotte spotted a rat of alarming size on the refuse heap outside." Was this an intentional allusion to the "rodents of unusual size" in The Princess Bride?
3. On page 48: "Talmage . . . studied at . . . Wesleyan". Is "at" right? His degree from Wesleyan was for nonresident work.
4. On page 63: "Latter-day Saint theology . . . espoused the eventual deification of virtually all human beings". That’s quite a strong statement, and there are no supporting arguments or endnotes presented here.
5. On page 98: "A Latter-day Saint congregation’s most important executive . . . is the 'executive secretary'." Maybe I don’t understand what an executive is. In an LDS ward, an executive secretary is a secretary who keeps the appointment calendar for the members of the bishopric.
6. On page 107: "Marion D. Hanks . .. resigned from the board [of trustees] in frustration" because of what happened at a 1975 meeting. But Elder Hanks was sustained as a member of the "board of education" in General Conference in 1975 and again in 1976. Are these different boards?
7. On page 168: Elder Packer’s 1981 talk "was fuel for the fire already raging . . . Elder Ezra Taft Benson had given a 1985 talk decrying . . ." The chronology seems not to make sense.
8. On page 169: "Quinn’s words were a journalist’s dream, and the Newsweek religion writers (and famous anti-Mormons) Jerald and Sandra Tanner were quick to capitalize." Unless the Tanners replaced Kenneth Woodward as the Newsweek religion writers, the parenthesis marks seem out of position.
9. On page 220: "It is from the warp and woof of all learning . . ." This is the start of a long quote from Orson F. Whitney that had already been quoted verbatim on page 143.
10. On page 276: ". . . less than 1 percent [of earth’s population] are committed Latter-day Saints". So there are no more than 77 million committed Latter-day Saints? That’s not a really tight bound! ( )