Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
This extraordinary work of investigative journalism by Jon Krakauer takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities, where some 40,000 people still practice polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God.
BUY THE BOOK
These clubs recently read this book...
Community Reviews
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.
I really wanted to give this book 4 stars. But, it was to one sided for me. Krakauer does a great job on interweaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their Mormon Fundamentalist murders along with the back ground story of the entire Mormon Church. However, through the stories it seemed that Mormons were either a) killers b) anti government conservative nut jobs and/ or c) polygamists that only wanted to marry as many women as possible and beat their children.
The story begins with a brutal murder of a mother and child and takes the reader down the entire history of the Mormon Church. He did write a detailed history about Joseph Smith and how this religion has been persecuted over the years.
If I look back on this book one year from now I would only think of how twisted the Mormon faith is with their plural wives and strict religious beliefs that have kept them from trusting any one outside their faith. There has to be some good Mormons out there, and if there are, Krakauer decided to leave them out of the book. This is confusing to me, because in the Author’s Notes he said he grew up with Mormons and has Mormon friends. I wonder why he wouldn’t include them in the story at least to let the reader know that they aren’t all polygamist zealots.
The story begins with a brutal murder of a mother and child and takes the reader down the entire history of the Mormon Church. He did write a detailed history about Joseph Smith and how this religion has been persecuted over the years.
If I look back on this book one year from now I would only think of how twisted the Mormon faith is with their plural wives and strict religious beliefs that have kept them from trusting any one outside their faith. There has to be some good Mormons out there, and if there are, Krakauer decided to leave them out of the book. This is confusing to me, because in the Author’s Notes he said he grew up with Mormons and has Mormon friends. I wonder why he wouldn’t include them in the story at least to let the reader know that they aren’t all polygamist zealots.
Read May 2022
Obsessed! I love all things religion, cults, and true crime so this was perfect. Loved the style of writing and it led me to read more of his books as well.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to add this one on here because it’s nonfiction and took a while to read but this book was incredibly interesting and I learned a lot. I’ve always been interested in true crime and religious extremism and this combines both in a tasteful yet insightful manner. This author also wrote Into the Wild which was one of my favorite books in high school. Will give a trigger warning there is a lot of themes of domestic abuse, rape, pedophilia, and a lot of incest. Definitely hard to read at times but very good. (They also did a Hulu series on this but I guess they made it a fictional series so it doesn’t really compare exactly but I will probably still watch it anyway.)
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.