Mormon Culture Region

The recent thread lawecon started got me thinking about what Wikipedia calls the Mormon Corridor and what others sometimes call the Mormon Cultural Region, which would be related to the Mormon Cultural Landscape, the Mormon Village, etc. The reason I said in that previous thread that I think geographical decentralization has made Mormonism less of a civilization than it once was is that when Mormons in, say, Tokyo and Sao Paulo lose their religious ties to the Church, there's not much left to bind them to each other (beyond common humanity). My guess is that (despite their apparent shared lack of interest in religious activity) someone like Wilford Brimley probably feels more connected to Mormonism than someone like Katherine Heigl does, because the former was more immersed than the latter in an entire community of Mormonism.

I'm currently experiencing strong feelings of nostalgia for the Great Basin Mormon culture I knew as a boy, so I've been looking around for relevant books. Any recommendations? Here's what I know of:

1) Goodbye to Poplarhaven: I acquired and read this a couple of decades ago. It's a collection of personal essays by Ed Geary about growing up in Huntington, Utah, in the early/mid 1900s. I find it wonderfully evocative of small-town Utah.

2) The Proper Edge of the Sky: Also by Geary, this book is less personal and more focused on the landscape of the high plateau country of central Utah. Again, a wonderful book.

3) Mormon Country: I want to like this book more than I do, but maybe I just haven't gotten far enough into it.

4) Believing in Place: A Spiritual Geography of the Great Basin: I bought this at a remainder sale and just started reading it last night. The author looks at Nevada and not just Utah, and at native religions and not just Mormonism, but so far it looks like it might hit the spot.

5) A Natural History of the Intermountain West: This is currently being shipped to me by Amazon. This book doesn't have really anything to say about Mormonism, but when you have a tight mental connection between landscape and religion, reading a book on geography can feel like a religious experience!

6) On Zion's Mount: I own this but haven't started it yet, so I don't how it compares with others in this list.

I just finished The Tree House by Douglas Thayer, which might be what you're looking for. It's about a boy growing up in Utah and then heading off to the Korean war.

I really loved Goodbye to Poplarhaven too. Such a great book.

Papa Married a Mormon and the Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald for turn of the century tales. (the 19 to 20 turning)

Wives and Sisters by Natalie Collins for a more modern but not so nostalgic view.

This is a very informative group. It is a shame that it is not more active.

I definitely agree.

One book I know of that sounds like it might meet cpg's interest, though I haven't read it, is Ethan R. Yorgason's Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region.

You might try these titles:
The Great Salt Lake, by Dale L. Morgan, published in 1947 with an introduction by the great western historian Ray Allen Billington. Morgan was a colleague and mentor to Juanita Brooks, a significant early and female historian of the Mormon experience.
The City of the Saints, by Sir Richard F. Burton (the British explorer and eccentric from the mid 1800s, not connected to Elizabeth Taylor!).
Wagon Roads West, by W. Turrentine Jackson. This is a general treatise on transportation in the early West, but has chapters related to travel in the "Mormon Corridor."
Great and Peculiar Beauty - A Utah Reader, edited by Thomas Lyon, et al. A somtimes poetic look at Utah and its diverse geography and demographics.
Of course there is the seminal study of Mormon culture and settlement in the west: Great Basin Kingdom by Leonard Arrington.

Enjoy