Review of Richard E. Bennett, 1820: Dawning of the Restoration (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University / Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2020). 380 pages. Hardcover, $31.99.

Abstract: Richard E. Bennett’s latest volume, 1820: Dawning of the Restoration, is not a book about the First Vision. Instead, it describes the world in 1820 through thirteen biographies that provide useful context to the seminal event. Included are Napoleon Bonaparte, Jean Francois Champollion, Alexander I, Ludwig van Beethoven, Theodore Gericault, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George IV/Queen Caroline, John Wesley/William Wilberforce/Hannah More, Simon Bolivar, John Williams, Henry Clay, Alexander Von Humboldt, and Joseph Smith. Topics of military conquest, music, science, literature, art, linguistics, religion, politics, and the industrial revolution receive extensive coverage for 1820 and the surrounding decades. Even if readers are not seeking an expanded understanding of the world that launched the Restoration, this well-written and highly researched compilation would be an interesting and rewarding read.

In his book, 1820: Dawning of the Restoration,1 author Richard E. Bennett provides Latter-day Saints with a unique gift, perhaps even an offering they did not know they even wanted. With the bicentennial of the First Vision still fresh in our memories, we might expect (as I did) that a book about 1820 would focus on that central event to the Restoration, but it does not.

It is not uncommon for Latter-day Saints to view the First Vision in a microcosm. Believing that God personally initiated the spiritual [Page 364]recovery of the earth, members may overlook consideration of that period’s simultaneous secular events. Bennett seeks to expand that perspective and notes, “One of the essential purposes of this book … is to place Joseph Smith’s First Vision story within a worldwide context, not the other way around.”2 He adds that “a worldwide history cannot be artificially bent to fit a narrow, preconceived, faith-promoting paradigm of interpretation and self-fulfilling prophecy.”3

Short biographies of individuals with historical significance in 1820 (Napoleon Bonaparte, Jean-Francois Champollion, Alexander I, Ludwig van Beethoven, Theodore Gericault, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George IV/Queen Caroline, John Wesley/ William Wilberforce/ Hannah More, Simon Bolivar, John Williams, Henry Clay, Alexander Von Humboldt, and Joseph Smith) comprise Bennett’s book. Through these stories, Dawning also delivers a sampling of world events that geographically and chronologically flanked Palmyra, New York, in 1820. The book describes a world much larger than the space typically portrayed by most authors who relate the details surrounding the First Vision.

Geographically, the histories included in Dawning encompass most of the world, especially Europe (see Figure 1). Through these biographies, Bennett illustrates the expanding knowledge and technology that was already moving throughout the world by 1820. Several primary subjects receive extensive consideration:

* Military conquest (Bonaparte, Alexander I, Bolivar)

* Music (Beethoven)

* Science (Von Humboldt)

* Literature (Coleridge)

* Art (Gericault)

* Linguistics (Champollion)

* Religion (Wesley/Wilberforce/Moore, Williams)

* Industrial Revolution (George IV)

* Politics (Clay)