The book is really divided in two parts--Krakauer does a brilliant job retelling the story of the Lafferty's. I was in elementary school when all of that unfolded so my memories of that were fairly weak; and I didn't know all of the details. I just remember the murder of the baby and the wife.

The story of the fundamentalists and the chapters on the polygamist sect are really well written. I know he didn't embellish that stuff. The fundamentalists are really a piece of work.

However, the third part of the story is where he founders. Krakauer retells true life really well, but if you are going to be a historian he needed to have talked to active LDS members. He never once cited active members and he never met with the leadership--even though they indicated they would have sat down with him to talk about the book.

What results is a one-sided, inaccurate account of Mormon history. He didn't get it right because he didn't talk to LDS members. They have nothing to hide--and yet they weren't sourced in the history. This is why there was outcry about the book by LDS members. Not because it was "anti-mormon" per se, but because this section was inaccurate--because he didn't talk to or use all of the sources available. Its okay as an investigative expose--but not when you are writing history. You don't treat history like an investigative expose. Especially when you ignore some of your sources. He didn't have to use everything that was told to him by the mainstream LDS. There's many instances where accounts that happened in the early history of the LDS church are conflicted. Including the Mountain Meadow Massacre. No one really knows what happened. There's a lot of accounts that disagree with what happened, but the story isn't one that LDS members are trying to hide.

That being said, Krakauer is doing a lot of good work with nonprofits that are helping the boys from these fundamentalist communities get a headstart in life. That's really cool.

Intellectually disingenuous.

A book like this causes you to stop and question the author's entire body of work. He starts out with a premise, then abandons his premise all together and follows a predetermined agenda, excitedly quoting sources that agree with him no matter how ridiculous and happily dismissing sources that disagree with him no matter how authentic.

Let me start by stating upfront, I am a practicing Latter-day Saint, but I always appreciate a well-turned argument. Fawn Brody, for instance, did a more than credible job lancing the Joseph Smith story in No Man Knows My History. I don't agree with her conclusions, but I admire the integrity of he work.

Had Krakauer stayed on topic with the polygamist murder , his Under the Banner of Heaven might have been an amazing book. Instead, he used the polygamist murder as an entre into an all-out assault on all things Mormon. Pretty soon he is citing a ridiculous theory that Brigham young had Samuel Smith poisoned to death and calling it "very credible," and ignoring any historian who dismisses it.

What does the death of Samuel Smith, which took place in 1844, have to do with a murder among modern polygamists? I don't know. Hell, I doubt Krakauer knows, but he threw it in and he called it very credible because the real goal of his book seems to be attacking religion and Mormons in particular.

This is one example. There are many, many more.

Krakauer wrote this book with an agenda and by doing so, he stripped his book of the credibility it deserved.

I've read several of Jon Krakauer's books, with hopefully more to come. UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN is, unfortunately, enroute to DNF for me. I simply feel the meager conclusions the author draws are too much work given the convoluted method of presentation he employs.

The "true crime" aspect of the book is horrific enough -- mass murder at the hands of a Mormon fundamentalist / polygamist with the help of the brothers he had under his sway. A more traditional approach to this kind of tale would be to sketch the murders, provide biographical details for the perp and his family, and then discuss how the crimes were solved. Of course, some background is necessary -- in Krakauer's later MISSOULA, for example, the author needs only a few pages to sketch the small city of Missoula, Montana, and its link to the university and football team. In this case, though, Krakauer departs from the present-day tale to provide -- in big ungainly chunks -- a history of the Mormon church from its founding in New York to its resettling near Nauvoo, Illinois, to its final emigration to Utah and Idaho, focusing on deviants and dissenters from mainstream "LDS" Mormonism.

For all that, I wasn't given as much information as I had hoped for. The psychology of religiously aberrant behavior -- how would-be leaders become psychopaths -- gets very little treatment here, and that unexplained skimping shows up in other places. For example, Joseph Smith's deciphering and translation of the (allegedly) ancient gold tablets depended in part on several artifacts he found buried in an Upstate New York hillside -- particularly two objects he named the "urim" and "thummim," the words based on ancient Hebrew. Yet Krakauer does not use those terms, which is roughly equivalent to sketching the history of Judaism without mentioning the stone tablets God handed down to Moses.

At over two-thirds of the way through, this book just isn't making it for me. I'm off to read all of MISSOULA, then come back to this one and re-consider my options.
(Six months later): Sorry, this book just didn't cut it for me. Perhaps if I hadn't known anything at all about Mormonism it would have had more to tell me.
(updated September 26, 2019).

This is a book that needs to be read very carefully. When I first picked it up in the bookstore and even read the prologue, I believed it to be a history of Mormon politics and theology. While Krakauer does tell the events of the development of this American religion, he focuses more on the extremist Fundamentalist Mormons, a distinction that can be easy to miss or misstate if one is not careful. Being religious but not Mormon, I found Krakauer's tone to be one of continued scorn for all religion of any kind, and I thought he could have just as easily conveyed his point and story with less of his own opinions and emotions woven into the chapters. I somehow doubt that unreligious readers would have noticed this as much, though. History has always been my least favorite subject, but this book kept my attention on nearly every page, and I had the distinct feeling of being smarter having finished it, as I learned a great deal of historical facts, names, and dates that are never covered in public school. Krakauer touched on the interesting debate of whether or not it is a valid defense to claim that your religion forced you to break the law. I appreciated that he did not try to solve the argument, but presented the difficulities associated with the continuing issue in legal courts.

He has the ability and he has a very strong character to play in a game with him for??

"I have to admit, the terrorists were following their prophet. They were willing to do essentially what I did. I see the parallel. But the difference between those guys and me is, they were following a false prophet, and I'm not." - Dan Lafferty

n  There is a dark side to religious devotion that is too often ignored or denied. As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane—as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout—there may be no more potent force than religion.n

More like 3.5 stars - The stuff involving the Lafferty murders was compelling but a lot of the historical side was hard to follow. Which isn't entirely Krakauer's fault. He's writing about a subject where family tends to get a little twisted.

Just try to make sense of this:
n  And because he happened to be the father of Debbie’s own stepmother, Mem, she unwittingly became a stepmother to her stepmother, and thus a stepgrandmother to herself.n



So. Yeah. If you didn't get lost at any point in this, you're a superhero.

That said, the parts dealing with the horrific murders committed by the Lafferty brothers and their "removal revelation" were 100% engaging. At times hard to read, but compelling all the same.

I mean there's so much more about Mormon Fundamentalists, Joseph Smith, black people being n  "literally created by Satan"n, and polygamy, (to name a few), that I'm not even going into here, because I am tired and this was a dense read. But rest assured, this shit is thorough. You'll know more about extreme religious fundamentalism than you ever wanted to know.

n  Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off.n

So overall, Under the Banner of Heaven could be confusing, but mostly due to the intensely complex history and family lineage; the writing handled it well. It's a powerful story of fanaticism and delusion, and of those who lost their lives because of it.

You normally think of Mormons as such pleasant, nicely turned-out folk. This book is inspired by an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon brothers who insisted god commanded them to do it. Taking this as the starting point, the book unwinds the history of the Mormon faith from the start until the present, studying each link in the chain of events leading up to the murder.

I imagine this provoked outrage in America, which takes religion far more seriously than we aggressively secular English do.

Yet Krakauer makes the distinction clear between the mainstreamers and the fundamentalists. As you might expect, the latter provides the meat of the text: the fundies are the ones that think treating women like cattle, committing murder, and marrying your own teenage offspring are divinely sanctioned pastimes. You read on, appalled but hooked, wondering how any of this could possibly be true even over the pond.

A true crime tale twinned with a history of religious fanaticism; compulsively readable, and thoroughly shocking.

I find it difficult to talk about religion because it’s forbidden to call it into question without being labeled “amoral” or quite simply just without hurting other people’s feelings. But this inability to discuss it has led to a lot of crimes committed in the name of God, and I think, like everything, to create positive change, religion needs to be interrogated. But as Jon Krakauer exposes in his exploration of Mormonism Under the Banner of Heaven, religion refuses any attempt at interrogation, hiding itself behind the specter of “faith.”

Faith. Impossible to understand because when you ask any questions about it, someone will respond that you merely “have to have faith.” How can you evaluate something that can’t be seen or heard or touched but merely felt? Krakauer does so by going back to the very beginnings of the Mormon faith, telling the story of Joseph Smith and his golden tablets from God unearthed in Upstate New York to Brigham Young and his bloody war against US domination. At the same time he intersperses anecdotes from modern Mormons, particularly from the Fundamentalist sect, who believe, on faith, all sorts of weird things. A common belief among these men (they’re always men; since the Church only allowed black priests in 1978, I think sexual equality won’t arrive for quite some time) is that they all happen to be God’s one and only unique prophet who can interpret his word on Earth.

This story is a wild ride, incredibly readable despite dealing in straight fact, simply because for any non-Mormon and particularly for any non-“faith”-y person, it’s obvious, hilariously so, how ridiculous this religion can be. For example, if you look at historical documentation surrounding Mormonism, Joseph Smith’s divine proclamation supporting polygamy is not divine so much as he wanted a godly excuse for his earthly philandering ways. Celestial marriage, as the Mormons call it, has been the most divisive issue in the Church ever since, pretty funny considering it was created because the Church’s founder just couldn’t keep it in his pants.

Another surprising thing I learned from this book: Mormonism was born in blood. Lots of it. The Western world loves to call out Muslims as bloodthirsty barbarians, but look no farther than the late 1800s in Utah, where Mormons murdered hundreds of “Gentiles” sometimes for political posturing, sometimes just because.

If you’re at all interested in Mormonism, that uniquely American brand of faith which, by the by, is also one of the fastest growing religions on the planet, Under the Banner of Heaven is a terrific entry. For the faith or the faithless, there is something here. I finished it with a greater understanding of Mormon history but still no appreciation as to why some people are so compelled to believe. And for once, I’m okay not knowing, cognizant that “knowing” would mean “unknowing” almost everything else.

Intriguing and Incisively Iconoclastic


Ron & Dan Lafferty, convicted of vicious 1984 murders of their brother's wife & infant daughter (shown below)



A razor-edged examination of fanaticism in religion, focused primarily on the Mormon Church and its fundamentalist offshoot sects that continue to adhere to the norms the federal government forced the Church to abandon over a century ago: polygamy and the marriage of pubescent females.

Jon Krakauer concentrates on the true story of the 1984 murders of a woman and her infant daughter, immersing the reader in a timeline that shows the violence of some of today's Mormon-offshoot fundamentalists can be traced back, at least in part, to the Church's origins after its leaders were banished by Eastern U.S.' post-Victorian society for polygamy and early marriages. Krakauer's poetic fire seems aimed at:

1) the flimsy nature of the societal line between a man--this seems primarily limited to men--being deemed a lunatic and seen as a religious prophet, when he says, "God told me [to do this] [I must sow my seed] [we must travel West] [I must impregnate your lovely daughter]"; and,

2) how shortly after Joseph Smith's death, the Church leaders' ubiquitous practice of prefacing nearly every decision or action with "God spoke to me," may have precipitated today's fundamentalists' justifying criminal conduct by saying God told him to ignore the laws so that he could marry and rape your daughter, and further, may have ultimately contributed to a fringe fanatic, whose black heart overflowed with resentment and revenge, perpetrating homicidal retribution by reading his demoniac thoughts as God's statement of a divine will.

A bit overlong, yet overall worthy of a read if you are fascinated by religious sects.

n  "I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty.

And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity. I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few more modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why- which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive."n

Thus says this best-selling author.

The author's comments were, for me, the best part of this book as they are a clear manifestation of Ecclesiastes 3 in the life of an, as yet, non-believer.

Having read this book detailing the roots and background of the Mormon (Latter Day Saints) movement, I'm honestly surprised it has any adherents. Yet, it is still one of the fastest growing religions.

The author explains that the Mormon faith originated relatively recently in the 19th century meaning that the original documents can be checked for authenticity. They are fundamentally flawed from beginning to end and many of the facts documented within them can be disproved by evidence....so how has this cult survived?

It seems that violence and indoctrination are the key, plus until recent years, the doctrine of plural marriage meant that effectively the Mormons were birthing their own protégées at an alarming rate. This book details the seedy history of child brides and women being forced into subservient roles akin to slavery or at least servanthood.

There is strong language in this book and some graphic details of child abuse. Above all, I found the story tragic as so many lives have been wasted in the sincere pursuit of something that will ultimate prove to be fruitless, and lead to eternal punishment. That is always tragic.

I pray that this well researched book will lead to prayer for those who are caught up in this cult, that they may find the truth- that Jesus alone saves! Also, that the author may have his eyes opened to the God who made Him and Who offers salvation full and free for all who trust Jesus.

I was confused with the timeline reading this initially but then realised that this book was published back in 2003. 19 years ago. My word where has time gone? Anyway, back to the review.

I have said before how much I like Krakauer’s books especially ‘Into Thin Air’. I do not know why it has taken me so long to read this one. The fact that I didn’t know it existed could well be the answer.

This time it is the Mormons or more to the point those fundamentalists that have split off from Joseph Smith’s original religion. In fact, ‘some two hundred schismatic sects have splintered off…sects continue to splinter off on an ongoing basis’. Mormon Fundamentalists are the polygamists. They see polygamy as a matter of religious duty. The Mormons distance themselves from the Fundamentalists but Joseph Smith married at least 33 women. The fundamentalists see themselves as carrying-on the true Mormon religion.

Krakauer provides the history of how Mormonism came into being and how they ended up where they are now. He concentrates on the more violent aspects. It is like a wild west story with Joseph Smith as some kind of outlaw. What Krakauer is getting to is how violence and even murder can be seen as part of a religious duty. He concentrates on revelations received by a Mormon Fundamentalist called Ron Lafferty who got his brother Dan to kill their brother’s wife and child. Horrific for sure.

For me, this was not one of Krakauer’s best. Yes, I learnt a lot but it dragged somewhat. Jumping back and forth to the violent past and the violent present. Lots of men with many wives a lot of passages just washed over me.

Religious nuts are hardly a new topic, but the Lafferty story is gruesome. This particular edition has a review of the book in its entirety at the end that is scathing of the book and Krakauer does own up to some mistakes he made but also points out areas where he feels the reviewer is plain wrong.

I really enjoyed Into Thin Air, but now I wonder if it is poorly done as this book was. As a Mormon I was amazed at Krakauer's complete naivete that he's trying to pass off as expertise and a well-researched book. I'd be scared of Mormonism too if I read this and didn't know better. The logic leaps he makes are simply massive. For a story about the Lafferty's, this is a nicely told yarn. For understanding its extrapolation into a story about Mormonism it is foolishness at its finest.