Rating: 
Summary: Missed Opportunity
Review: Jon Krakauer is a fine writer who missed a chance to write a fine book here. Instead of writing an honest, straightforward account of a fascinating subject--as he did in "Into the Wild"--Krakauer instead assumes that the reader is unable to make their own judgements about the subjects of this book. You would think that simply portraying two pathetic and nearly-insane murderers from the Mormon church, that alone would shed enough light on their background for the reader to judge Mormonism. Instead, Krakauer makes the leap from their insane violence to Mormonism as a whole and then, remarkably, to religion as a whole. Rather than let this fascinating story tell itself, he seems bent on warning us that ALL religion is liable to produce such maniacs. It's an unfair, unjustified, unsubstantiated, uneducated stab and it simply doesn't work. Worst yet, it detracts greatly from the book when the author feels the need to interrupt the story by jumping up on his soapbox. I'm not a Mormon and I'm not even a Mormon sympathizer, frankly, but I recognize when I've missed out on a good story by someone who seems bent on convincing me of his view, and that's what happened here. Krakauer's views on religion as a whole seem about as informed as mine would be if I tried to write a book on mountain climbing.
Rating: 
Summary: Insanity compounding insanity compounding insanity compou...
Review: I just finished this book which I had begun along with Isaacson's fine biography of Benjamin Franklin. Reading both books at the same time was like reading a treatise on "Black" and at the same time reading one on "White". Krakauer has done us all a service in ably recording the insanity that indisputably lies at the fringes of all religions. The insanity just lies a little closer to the core beliefs of Mormonism than most older religions because the Mormons are a sect in its relative infancy. A look back at the attrocities committed in the name of Christ by early Christians makes some of the Mormon fundis seem almost benign. Early Christians were roasting each other alive by locking entire congregations in desenting churches at this stage in their development. (At least the Mormons only killed "unbelievers" in their one large scale murderous binge, the "Mountain Meadows Massacre", rather than murdering minor schismatics.) And Islam has a well known long and bloody history, and shares with the Mormons a distinctly anti-woman bias allowing for multiple wives and concubines for its followers. Under The Banner Of Heaven opens with the brutal murder of a young woman and her child in her home at the hands of her brothers-in-law, supposedly carried out under the direction of God, and Krakauer proceeds to carry us through the insanity of the formation of a new religion and its offshoots. I have always had severe reservations about a people who could accept the teachings that Independance, MO is the Biblical "Garden of Eden". As a Roman Catholic (and of course here in this Church lies other tales of insanities of historic proportions) friend of mine says, "I've been to Independance, MO. Independance is a nice town, but anyone who thinks this is the Garden of Eden is nuts!" Krakauer does a good job of allowing the documents of Joseph Smith and his contempories as well as the modern day "Prophets" speak for themselves. He illuminates brilliantly the isolation, the saddness and desperation, as well as the insanity, that lie at the heart of religious fundimentalisms. Unfortuately, he could have been writing about the extremes of any of modern day and historical religions. It is a good book. It will be attacked by adherents of all fundimentalist faiths, because any of them can be tarred with the same brush. wfh
Rating:
Summary: Not what I was hoping for
Review: Unfortunately, Mr. Krakauer presents a very one-sided story. I have no affiliation with the LDS, but was appalled by the unrestricted defamation provided in this book. Chapter after chapter I was hoping for any bit of positive insight, but found none.His research does appear to be in good form, but I would like to see this book on the shelves next to the supermarket tabloids do to the negative content. Every story has two sides. Good leaks from the pores of the worst of human deeds.
Rating:
Summary: A powerful indictment of American religious fundamentalism
Review: Krakauer's wonderful storytelling ability held me spellbound for a memorable day of reading and I have since found many occasions to discuss the book's profound moral implications with friends. He shines a bright light on the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism that is becoming so much a part of how modern day America defines herself. With an admirable dose of objectivity and dispassionate journalism, he exposes a dark side of human nature that will evoke wide ranging emotions in all thoughtful readers. I have long suspected that any belief system that is based on a doctrine of itself being the one true faith above all others opens the door to many human "evils". Krakauer's penetrating look into the minds of these cold blooded murderers raises disturbing questions the role religion plays in our society. No doubt our Founding Fathers grappled with these very same questions when they wrote the constitutional clauses dealing with seperation of church and state. I suspect that readers whose lives are bottled up in an all encompassing and unquestioning belief system will find great discomfort and even anger with the way in which Krakauer connects the dots (it is apparent some of the reviewers at this site are so moved). I found the last chapter to be the most engaging and thought provoking in which the sanity plea during the trial was discussed and how muddled the lines can become become between religious beliefs and insanity. I heartily recommend this book as a must read for anyone with interests in religion and society.
Rating: 
Summary: Fundamentalist Mormons...not all Mormons!
Review: The point of this book was to investigate how the very roots of Mormonism contribute to the tendency for people to break off from mainstream LDS and start fundamentalist sects as well as how the understanding of these roots can help one to understand people who commit crimes in the name of LDS scripture. I do not think this book was critical of the present-day mainstream LDS church at all - in fact, the author did not even delve deeply into the present-day LDS church. The book focused on the fundamentalist sects and their way of life. If any mistake is made, it is by readers who generalize the information about fundamentalist mormons to all mormons. As for the presentation of LDS history, any fair historical book on Catholicism, Judaism, etc. would show just as many "embarrasing" blotches on the religions' record. History should be accepted as just that, history, and should be learned from.
Rating:
Summary: Krakauer is wonderful
Review: I will not begin to proclaim that I am an expert on the Mormon church, and I am not a religious man even though I was brought up as a Christian... but Krakauer's wonderful novel brought to light a fact that intrigues me... are not the fundamentalists the only ones in any religion who are truly practicing 'said' religion?... if the Mormon church turns it's back on Joseph Smith's revelations, are they truly Mormon?... if they give up on two very basic teachings of the man who founded their religion aren't they something else entirely?... the most intriguing fact in the entire book was the numbers given for how many Mormons will be around by the end of this century... absolutely fascinating!
Rating: 
Summary: author's viewpoint untenable with tabloid quality research
Review: Jon Krakauer claims he is a journalist, not a scholar. That's a good thing, because the version of Ockham's razor he uses in support of this tome's tenuous abstractions is so dull, he would be forever relegated to sporting toilet paper acne. A perusal of this latest work suggests that his journalistic acumen and objectivity, unfortunately, are found to be similarly suspect. His previous work regarding Everest, In Thin Air, "was greeted with scathing criticisms for inaccuracies and misrepresentations of people and events." Of this, reviewer Phoebe Kate Foster of Pop Matters further adds "it could well serve to cloud Krakauer's credibility in this new book, where he draws so much upon history." Terryl Givens, Professor of English Literature at the University of Richmond, in reviewing the book for the Boston Globe, states "Insofar as Krakauer recounts Mormonism's past, he does it poorly, using outdated sources and discredited reports to portray a Joseph Smith and a Mormonism reminiscent of 19th-century caricatures. His picture of contemporary Mormonism is also seriously misinformed, leaving us with far more overlap between Mormons and renegade polygamists than really exists, and grave misperceptions ... Krakauer irresponsibly misinforms . . . - all in an effort to link deluded modern murderers with a skewed depiction of Mormonism's past and present" Apart from strenuously avoiding the tedium of presenting facts that do not support his thesis, which by the way, teeters precariously on the pinnacle of logic, he acknowledges at the outset of the work that he lacks the sensibilities sufficient to understand, let alone investigate the principles of faith-based motivation. "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. Anything can happen. Absolutely anything. Common sense is no match for the voice of God." This imperious assertion surely provides an unstable platform from which to distinguish faith from religious fanaticism. It serves even less well as a foundation from which to impeach the faith of millions as the basis for the actions of one legally declared a paranoid delusional murderer. Givens, in the Boston Globe, adds "The Laffertys were not the first murderers to hear voices, and they won't be the last. But applying Krakauer's model, every David Berkowitz (''Son of Sam'') would provoke an inquiry into the sinister potential of Judaism (after all, Abraham heard voices telling him to kill Isaac). But that would clearly be anti-Semitic. . . . Does this mean we should seek the roots of his psychopathology in the Jewish tradition?. . . . . To blame Mormonism for Dan Lafferty is no less an act of naked bigotry masquerading as journalistic investigation." So, there we have it. But what do we have? I can't trust the fact gathering. I can't trust the basis for assimilating and presenting the facts. The premise the biased facts are set forth to support is warped and topples with the zephyr of reason. Givens' review reports "Krakauer makes some token gestures at seriousness of purpose, but they fall short" factors which lead Pheobe Kate Foster's conclusion of the work "Ultimately, the reader is left wondering exactly what this book actually meant to accomplish." My sentiments exactly.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning, deeper and more subtle than commonly reviewed
Review: A stunning and very brave book. Given the history he outlines, one wonders what Krakauer's family is doing to protect themselves. A study of religious extremism, of fundamentalism and revelation, of religious genius, of the terrible frailties of men and the horrors they do. It portrays in detail the very dark history of America in general and of the Mormon faith's origins and modern offshoots. It leaves as a bit of mystery how the mainstream Mormon church has changed so much. In footnotes here and there he outlines some rather radical changes in Mormonism, starting in the 1970s and extending through the 1990s. These trends seem to have brought the modern church into a comfortable alignment with modern American evangelical Christianity; despite deep theological divisions the behaviors of these faithful are often exemplary. I wonder about an unwritten influence of Mormon women in civilizing an early faith characterized by an amplification of much of the darker aspects of the male psyches. That story is for another book perhaps ... An astounding work. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A excellent yarn
Review: Forget about the pro-Mormon negative reviews of this book listed here. This is a terrfic narrative about people in the present and the past in the most stunning state in the U.S. (and how and why they went there). I assume you can level some factual criticisms against this book that you can against Into Thin Air (page 150--that is just climbing technique that no one would ever try, blah, blah). There may be some inaccuracies, but the reason people read his books is because he has an uncanny eye for recreating scenes and boiling down intellectual arguments to a level that everyone can understand. If you want to take the theological aspect further there is liberal use of references (including the dry but still definitive Varieties of Religious Experience). Aside for it being a very evocative read, it's not an anti-LDS book. It uses some of the fundamentalist offshoots of that religion to explore a wider question about the basis for religious belief. That's not a particularly original line of inquiry but he injects a great spark by wrapping around contemporary events.
Rating:
Summary: Deep Subject Addressed with Shallow Analysis
Review: I have read Mr. Krakauer's accounts "Into Thin Air" and "Into the Wild" and I enjoyed them both. I enjoyed being transported to places I had heard about, but never been. After having read "Banner of Heaven", I now question the ability of Mr. Krakauer to research an event and then report on it fairly and accurately. I noticed there were several accounts of the Everest disaster that took issue with Krakauer's portrayal of what took place and where he placed the blame. As a member of the LDS church, I was disappointed in much of what Mr. Krakauer chose to focus on in his book. He is once again flippantly misplacing blame for a terrible tragedy. It seemed to me that excommunicated members of the LDS church committed the vast majority of the atrocities referenced in this book. Yet Mr. Krakauer repeatedly lays the blame at the feet of the mainstream (if I can associate that word with the church) LDS leaders (past and present). He recycles dirt on early church leaders without any understanding of who dug up the dirt and what their motivations might have originally been. It's all regurgitated as fact. It wouldn't have hurt to have someone who understands Mormon history and philosophy proof the book prior to its publication. That would have saved Mr. Krakauer a great deal of heat for misrepresenting simple facts. The author states on several occasions that he is not Mormon bashing and that he has no ax to grind. Yet he does relatively little to accentuate the differences between the atypical fringes (often mentally unstable individuals or social misfits) that find themselves attracted to Mormon splinter groups and the conventional (and much more numerous) members of the LDS faith. What this leads to is the mistaken impression that the Mormons who live down the street from so many Americans are of the same fabric as the lunatics who kidnap, enslave, and sometimes murder innocent girls and women. Just read the reviews that say things like "I couldn't believe that these are the people who make those nice commercials." Even Reader's Digest falls into the trap. Its August 2003 Featured Selection review refers to the Lafferty brothers as "Mormon brothers." They were excommunicated Mormons. By definition, this means they seriously deviated from the values and commandments taught by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That's how one gets excommunicated from the church. Perhaps Mr. Krakauer's next work will be a work of true fiction. That will relinquish from him from the professional responsibility of doing solid research and understanding the difference between facts and fiction.
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