Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

I didn’t read it. I watched the series. If fucked me up a bit and greatly increased my suspicions of LDS/Mormons as well as organized religion in general. All Cults!

I love Jon Krakauer just as much as everyone else. Everything he writes is at least engaging even though he may be a tad biased and afraid of stating the brutal truth at times. He's a great writer and this is a great story that he improved many times over by adding the historical explanation for Mormonism.

The only thing this is missing is frankly pages. It's an excellent book that is a great history lesson and experience. Yet I kinda wish we had more interviews and opinions to fully set up the murder mystery town and setting. This is jumping in time and place so once we get back to the murders we stay there for only a few pages with mainly a factual overview with even more modern day examples of Mormon crimes mixed in. It's a tad jarring and I'm not always feeling or understanding the story. The TV show is nearly fully fictional yet actually shows you more about how they lived and how they were thinking where here he merely mentions it.

It's a great book and I'm hyped for reading much more about Mormonism now which shows just how enticing his writing is. I also think the short length is great. Yet for the topic at hand he could have used more pages.

Learned do much about the Mormon church and its history.

4/5 stars
I found this book very interesting. The author uses the crimes committed by the Lafferty brothers to examine mormon fundamentalism, all the way from the humble beginnings of the religion until present day. I was very much enthralled by the history itself, maybe because I'm a history nerd. The description of the crimes committed against and by the mormons during the foundation of their towns had me glued to my kindle.

Having said that I found the book a bit disjointed a couple of times. While I think the use of a shocking event as a starting point and a way to string together the different points the author wanted to make was a good idea, sometimes it took to long to get back to the main crime to the point that I had forgotten where we left off.

The author tried to include everything he had found, and I understand the inclination but in giving all the polygamous sects a little bit of spotlight he never really dug deep into them. This last observation didn't bother me so much since I have seen documentaries like Keep Sweet over on Netflix, but if you haven't you might find youself confused. I will also say that the author doesn't seem to care much for mormons (and even religion as a whole) and it shows, which may rub some people the wrong way.

Wow… this book was amazing and full of great information. I learned a lot not just about the murders of Brenda and Erica but also the Mormon faith.