Rating: 
Summary: Not the Osmond Mormons
Review: Jon Krakauer leaves the mountains and wilds behind and sets his sights on Mormon country.The focal point of the book is of a 1984 violent murder of a Mormon woman and her daughter at the hands of two of her brother in laws. The brothers, believing they were spoken to by God carried out the brutal crime with hardly a thought. It's an interesting read that moves beyond the murder and takes a greater look at what was behind it, religious fanaticism. Be it Muslim, Mormon, or Christian, Krakauer loosly touches on what makes these people tick, while specifically examining the Church of Ladder Day Saints, and it's founders.
I found much of the history interesting, although felt it started to get a little bogged down by his sometimes heavy handed point in reference to fanaticism. Still it's a fascinating read about a group of people living in our country that many people probably don't know anything about.
Rating:
Summary: Just when I thought I was over Mormonism
Review: I'm a former Mormon, born and raised in Salt Lake City. I blew off the church 23 years ago, and as long as I didn't discuss my views with my mother, it wasn't much of an issue until I read this book. It made me uncomfortable at first, I think because the linkage between fundamentalism and modern Mormonism goes against my early programming. How annoying to realize the oppressive religion and irrational beliefs I'd spent several years divesting myself of are still with me.
Nothing in this book is unfamiliar to me, but it's full of details I hadn't heard. Krakauer tells a story that's quite different from the one I was raised on and, perhaps unintentionally, reveals the Mormon religion to be a tremendously successful scam. The cult that anti-Mormons say it is and church members insist it is not. Suddenly I'm feeling angry at having been subjected to it.Parental issues aside, Under the Banner of Heaven is fascinating, thoroughly researched and footnoted, and extremely well written if you don't mind the author's frequent use of obscure words to show off his vocabulary. Grab a dictionary and settle in for an engrossing read.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant synthesis of history, religion, and abuse
Review: Jon Krakauer admits he has become obsessed with extremes. It takes one form of extremism to go on an Everest climb, as he shows with "Into Thin Air." Now he returns to the West of his youth. Yet this is not the book he planned to write. Krakauer admits he wanted to describe how today's LDS Church, with their clean-cut, do-good approach, is at odds with its founding history. Instead, he decided to write about fundamentalist Mormons. While the LDS Church declared polygamy illegal in 1890, it took time for the practice to end in the official church. Those who would not accept the changes continued polygamy, with groups moving to Mexico and Canada. And there are those who continue this practice today. Krakauer is determined to understand how this came to be. In order to do this, he must retell the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. While polygamy is no longer accepted by the current LDS authorities, the average Mormon seems less inclined to stamp it out. Krakauer shows several cases of gung-go district attorneys who go after polygamous families, and how these white knights are subsequently removed from office in the next election. He introduces us to small towns where everything and everyone in it answers to one man, the head of the Fundamentalist LDS church (FLDS). All property is owned by their church's corporation. And the girls are married by age 14. Krakauer finds many of them married to men who are already related to them, and at least a generation older. Women are seen as transferrable property, with marriages cancelled should any church member run afoul of the church leader. And remember Elizabeth Smart? Here was a case of a modern Mormon family running into another FLDS wanna-be. Krakauer contrasts her case with another 14-year-old, a FLDS community member, who was hidden in another FLDS community when her sister tried to rescue her from an early marriage she didn't want. The difference between the media treatment of the two kidnap victims is horrifying. All this is merely background for a shocking murder case, where two LDS members who moved toward FLDS decided to kill their sister-in-law for being a bad influence, and her two-year-old as well. Both men insisted they were acting on revelations from God. Krakauer turns this into the Court's unease with discussions of religious belief and sanity. The negative reviews of this book appear to come from LDS members who are unhappy with Krakauer's history of their church. It's a pity they missed his important points on the danger of revealed religion (where anyone can justify anything), or the welfare fraud committed by FLDS communities (subsequent wives declare themselves single parents and don't identify the father, while living in a trailer in his backyard), or the uneasy relationship between mainline Mormons and latter-day polygamists. It's a shame they are unwilling to look at their own church's rapidly mutating scriptures, where Krakauer shows how doctrinal racism was not removed from church teachings until the 1970s. One might ask how many of them actually read the book rather than took the advice of their stake president to publicly condemn it. Read it for yourself, then let us know. It is a fascinating, disturbing, insightful, and important book.
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Summary: Not Anti-Mormon...just Intelligent
Review: This is an extraordinary book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Though the Mormon Church has expressed it's hostility toward the book, as with all ostriches, they are simply sticking their head in the sand and asking the rest of us to follow suit. Thank goodness for people outside the Church who look in, and tell us what they see. This is not an anti-mormon book, and the fact that Latter-day Saints and their leaders are so worked up about it seems to me to be a recognition that Krakauer is hitting pretty close to home. Ironically, he handles the modern LDS church with kid gloves, and is very careful to make the distinction between the Mormon Fundamentalits and the Mormons themselves. However, and this is the point that should be lost on no one, both churches hail from the same "common ancestors," and have evolved rather organically from those early prophets, most importantly Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and John Taylor. At the time of Wilford Woodruff the world saw a split, and those familiar with the paradigms of biological evolution will recognize exactly what was going on. Today we see two radically different organizations with radically different messages...but they came from the same place. Here's another juicy item that must drive the Church nuts. The fundamentalists are perfectly justified in their position on polygamy, extreme patriarchy and racism. After all, if those were the "revealed word of God" back in the early days of the church, then who are the modern day leaders to deny that word of God today? Just because wicked governments :-) refuse to cooperate should be no reason to back away from the most important points of doctrine. If it was good enough for Daniel to not back down (resulting in being cast into the lions den) then it should be good enough for modern prophets to not back down, either. (Okay, it's pretty darn important for me to state that I'm simply pointing out the fundamentalist argument, not my own opinion...) At the end of the book you are treated to the prosecution team's argument that religious thinking is NOT insane, even it is, on the face, irrational. Any religious person should be moved, not disturbed, by the thoughtful arguments made by the prosecution's witnesses, many of whom were Mormon. There are those who review this book who claim that the history is all wrong because it isn't always consistent with the "faithful history" that Elder Boyd K. Packer et al promote, and which is often the only history Mormons are familiar. Krakauer has consumed a great deal of history, and has drawn some really important conclusions. To throw out his book as "inacurate" because of a few minor disagreements on interpretation of facts would be like throwing out the quantum theory because we can't actually "see" a quark. The viewer, or the reader, interprets what they see or read and comes to rational conclusions based on their assessment. I want to read what other people DECIDE ON THEIR OWN after doing the research, not the same, tired old stories that have been approved and fed to the sheep year after year after year. I 've read a ton of Church history, and nothing that Krakauer said raised any red flags for me. But if there is a mistake in his "facts" somewhere (and if it's there, it's tiny), then it is still immaterial. The conclusions that the reader draws as they read how religious zeal CAN lead the faithful far, far astray is dead-on, pun intended. This is an excellent, excellent book, and no one, Mormon or otherwise, should be "afraid" to read it, or afraid to consider what the implications might be.
Rating:
Summary: Terrifying, an 'unputdownable' thriller
Review: Once again Jon Krakauer rivets readers' attention in his newest page-turner. Thoroughly researched and documented [though inadequately footnoted] this book will alternately shock, disgust, outrage, sadden and even offend all who read it, whether LDS or not. It's that relevant, and that captivating. A glance through the reviews here [and on the church's official website] shows that most LDS reviewers have little good to say about this book. No wonder. Without the least hint of animosity or ill will or "anti-mormon" spirit, Jon Krakauer has called onto the carpet the entire history of the Mormon faith, using their own sources. His evidence is impeccable, more often than not consisting of the actual statements made by the LDS leaders and decision makers invovled in establising and maintaining the polygamous practices at issue. This book is a must-read, not only for every serious student of LDS history, but for anyone interested in the history and current practice of polygamy in the United States. It cannot be recommended highly enough. Enjoy.
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Summary: Historical Errors
Review: How sad that hundreds of people will read this book and believe what Mr. Krakauer has written about the history of the LDS Church. There were so many half-truths and rumers that he added to support his story of religious belief and violence. There are many people who will argue my opinion that Mr Krakauer has done a poor job of presenting the LDS history, and say that he gives a wonderful insight onto what really happened,but honestly, lets stop and think about what sells books...
If you read this book and you're actually interested in learning about the real LDS history you should go to the true source and visit LDS.org or visit fairlds.org to read an honest review of this book by LDS members or simply talk to a member.
All in all though, people will choose to believe what they believe. It's not as if this is the first book to give a sordid history of whatever religion. If someone was really interested in Church history they would actually do a little more research.
And this book will eventually join every other dust covered book in the public libraries all over the world. And 11 million LDS members, and millions more that will probably join won't think twice about it.
Rating:
Summary: A MUST-READ!
Review: Jon Krakauer seeks to tell not just the immediate story of the Lafferty murders, but of the story behind that story - the story which allowed the murders to happen, and allows Lafferty to believe in his own innocence. Krakauer is a mountain-climber - his last book Into Thin Air was a gripping account of a catastrophic ascent of Everest which he participated in - and he approaches this story as a mountain-climber would. An understanding of the Lafferty murders is merely the summit. What Krakauer does is navigate himself, and the reader to that summit - or at least the closest possible approximation of it. This is indeed a mountainous story - the story of a religion (Mormonism, aka the Church of the Latter-Day Saints or LDS) and a corresponding extremism (Fundamental Mormonism or FLDS) each bred almost entirely in the United States, entirely in an age of science and the printing press, that survives, and in fact, thrives today internationally and will no doubt continue to grow - a religion that paradoxically thrives even in the "rational" world of science, engineering and education. The story of Fundamentalist Mormonism (not to be confused with the mainstream LDS which finds Fundamentalism contemptible) is a biblical saga rife with war, mass exodus, banishments, betrayals, grandiose leaders, and bitter opponents, and Krakauer leads us up this mountain with his critical inquisitiveness and the epic stamina and level-headedness of a seasoned guide. The story is broken up into four parts, alternating between Mormon history and the contemporary story of the Lafferty killings and subsequent trials. Under the Banner of Heaven, like Krakauer's previous books, is a definite nail-biter, but he's not peddling easy sensationalism here. This is a book that was clearly a spiritual journey for its author, and in many ways, it can be for the reader as well. A terrific book! Also recommended: THE LOSERS' CLUB by Richard Perez
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Summary: Methinks they doth protest too much
Review: I really wanted to find fault with this book so that I might suggest the alternate title 'Into the Trash' but, fortunately, that was not the case. Contrary to what many reviewers would have you believe, 'Under the Banner of Heaven' is not poorly researched nor is it intended to be an attack on religion in general or the Mormon Church in specific. Krakauer's portrayal of early LDS history is well-supported, often by church records. In cases where he ventures into speculation he says so and limits his speculation to cases, such as the Powell expedition murders, where supporting evidence exists. Krakauer showed restraint in these chapters by choosing not to include the murder of the U.S. Survey party of John W. Gunnison and other suspicious deaths in the area. What I found most fascinating, though, is the theological issues that this book brings up. Krakauer does not denigrate religion per se but poses the question of what is the dividing line between faith and fanaticism. If we can believe that God told Isaiah to kill his own son, why can't we believe that he didn't also tell Dan Lafferty to kill his brother's wife? It's an unpleasant question but it makes you think and that is something Jon Krakauer is very good at.
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Summary: Wow! A real eye opener.
Review: This was an outstanding inside view of a lunatic religion. It definitely points out the facts and explains a tremendous amount of mystery in the Mormon religion. If you are a Mormon, you might be offended. I challenge you to read it anyway and weigh the facts for yourself. If half of what Krakauer says is based in facts, then it would behoove any person to consider who and what they follow. While it focuses mainly on the Fundamentalists, it definitely sheds a light on Joseph Smith and the unorthodox life he lived as well as the people he controlled. Overall, it was great reading and very well put together. I found it very hard to put down. After Into Thin Air, Krakauer has raised the bar again.
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Summary: useless, read 'into the wild' or 'into thin air'
Review: Krakauer used to be a respected adventure jurnalist for outside magazine. He first caught everyones attention by writing a book about a yuppie kid who dies in Alaska while trying to go 'into the wild'. His next book was a landmark account of the 1998 death season on Everest where about 20 people went 'into thin air' and never returned including the guide for the group Jon was with. Now Jon has put his sights on the radical Mormon settlements and critiqued religion in the process. Maybe Jon should visit Mecca to see some read fanatics or even the west bank and see some orthodox Jews(do they take the Uzi's off in the mikveh???). Jon K has drawn our attention to the many small settlements of Mormon radicals who dot the western hemisphere. He wants us to beleive these viscious religious people are somehow a threat to normalcy. Maybe they are a threat to the wine and brie crowd, but these religious fanatics dont want to stroll donw fifth avenue, they want to be left alone. Krakauer brings our attention to some guy who has 20 wives or something(and of course he must point out that Brigham Young had lots of wives, the last of which was a teenager). Yet Krakauer does not mention Henry the 6th or Mohommed who both had teenage wives among the many they had. Why is this? Is Krakauer afraid that He might be english and theirfore a descendent of Polygamous Henry VI or is Jon afraid of offending America's new privilidged class, the muslims. Polygamy is practiced in Islam after all. So why is bad when radical Mormons want to have a few wives? Eh Jon? Why is it ok for the Saudis, but not us Americans? Or is Krakauer just jealous he cant get more then one lady at a time. This book is a waste. it sopposedly bills itself as shedding some light on religous fanatics but in fact it doesnt. All fundamentalist religious people are mostly the same, they keep to themselves and they act strange(go visit some hasidic Jews and youll understand). But its strange to us and to draw such fire upon them and castigate them and then to imply that Mormonism as a religion is upsetting because these radicals exist is just a bad conclusion to a book that did no need to be written. Krakauer should have made this a magazine article and kept it at that, or he should keep to outdoor adventure writing, which is what he is good at.
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