defeat would lead to the end of "liberty as we have come to esteem it." In 1945, Bowen was on the Board of Trustees for Brigham Young University. Bowen was involved with the search for a new BYU president after World War II, and was one of the strongest supporters, along with John A. Widtsoe, of eventual appointee Ernest L. Wilkinson. It has been argued Bowen was probably the chief author behind an unsigned review of the prominent book No Man Knows My History by Fawn M. Brodie, which was one of the first biographies of Joseph Smith to take a secular and critical approach. This review, entitled "Appraisal of the So-Called Brodie Book," was published on May 11, 1946 in the Deseret News. In it, he criticizes the book by dismissing it as being "wholely atheistic" and nothing more than a "composite of all anti-Mormon books that have gone before pieced into a pattern conformable to the author's own particular rationale and bedded in some very bad psychology." It has been further argued that this likely mirrored the Church's official position as the review was republished and circulated as a missionary tract of the same title. Later on, in the April general conference of 1946, Bowen himself openly criticized the book, along with some others present, by making a "stirring defense" of Joseph Smith against the "poisonous slander of those who would make him out an imposter." Bowen died of arteriosclerosis in Salt Lake City at the age of 77. He was replaced in the Quorum of the Twelve by Richard L. Evans. Bowen was buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery. Published works References 1875 births 1953 deaths 20th-century Mormon missionaries American Mormon missionaries in Germany American Mormon missionaries in Switzerland American general authorities (LDS Church) American lawyers Apostles (LDS Church) Burials at Salt Lake City Cemetery General Presidents of the Young Men (organization) Latter Day Saints from Idaho People from Logan, Utah People from Oneida County, Idaho Religious leaders from Idaho Sunday School (LDS Church) people University of Chicago Law School alumni