Rating: 
Summary: An eye opener
Review: Jon Krakauer has had the courage to chronicle the history of the Mormon Church and detail its dark underside. This is a MUST READ, regardless of your religious or non-religious affiliation.
Rating:
Summary: Krakauer Does It Again !
Review: This is a fantastic book. Very well written, yet so disturbing.
Couldn't put it down. Krakauer definately seems to have a great talent for understanding, and then describing the intricate layers of people and the situations they find themselve in.
Rating: 
Summary: Looking forward from here...
Review: It is not the Mormon church's past that concerns me. It is its future. The most chilling paragraph in this book was Mr. Krakauer's reference to Bloom's prediction that, due to the astonishing growth in LDS membership, in the not-too-distant future it may be difficult to pass any legislation without the cooperation of the general authority. As a non-Mormon living in Salt Lake City, I am painfully aware of the stranglehold the church's views have on our civil liberties. (Mormons try to claim there IS a separation of church and state here, but it just ain't so.) Whether the Lafferty's and those like them are an aberration and not in the mainstream is beside the point. We need to look at how the widely held views of the church affect day-to-day life, such as how the concept of "bleeding the beast" has crept into the business community. These singular cases of outrageous acts should not be our main concern. Let's examine the psychic manipulations and economic power of a people who see themselves as not just saved, but superior to all others.I recommend THE POET AND THE MURDERER as an insight into just how ready even the church's leaders were to believe the worst of their founders.
Rating: 
Summary: Under the Banner of Boring
Review: Unlike many of my fellow negative reviewers, I am not a Mormon myself, and I confess to have found the religion sort of odd. I enjoyed reading Mormon-based true crimes in the past (about Jeffrey Lundgren, Ervil LeBaron and Mark Hofmann) and was looking forward to reading another. Unfortunately, this paled in comparison to those. Krakauer tries to link the Mormon church with the very tragic murder of Brenda and Erica Lafferty, and frankly, the link is tenuous at best. While it's true that Dan and Ron Lafferty were members of a Mormon fundamentalist spinoff church that approved of polygamy, that association had little to do with why Brenda was killed: her murder was basically a revenge act by her angry brother-in-law, who blamed Brenda for his divorce. Three of the four men who were involved in that murder were not polygamists, and two were not even Mormon, but petty-criminal drifters. At Ron
Lafferty's trial, there was some interesting testimony about insanity verses religon.Krakauer obviously enjoyed this discussion, as he clearly thinks "religous" and "crazy" are synonymous(sp.)and got to get in a few jibes at Bush and Ashcroft, but for those who do not want to make liberal-agnostic statements, it was just predictable criminal psychologist testimony. (Of course Ron's defense team would say he was crazy--Duh!) Krakauer treats the crime in a very superficial manner, without much detail about the lives of the victim or the murderers. Just when the story starts to get interesting, he drops the crime writing and returns to a history of the Mormon church, which is not very interesting and is similar to those I've read in other, better true crimes. Krakauer is clearly a man with a mission, to smear the Mormon church and churches in general, but it had the opposite effect on me--I now have new respect for the Mormons, at least the majority with only one spouse! Read Prophet of Death by Pete Earley for a truly riveting Mormon true crime, one with meticulous research and a clear link between a man's religion and his dastardly acts. Skip this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Save your money
Review: This is nothing like Into The Wild or Into Thin Air. It's a disturbing look at the twisted reality and growth of Morman fundamentalism. I'm glad I read it, but it's not a keeper.
Rating:
Summary: NickB
Review: Krakauer has found a story that needs telling and the world needs to hear. He has researched and told the story in his typically detailed, careful, yet thoroghly engrossing style. Krakauer knows that real-life human tragedy is more thought provoking than any work of fiction. The tale of fundamentalist Mormons, their disturbing lifestyles, disturbing origins, and deeply disturbed world views creates the most compelling work of non-fiction I've read in a decade. Mormon critics claim that his "history" is somehow lacking. These good folks are missing the point of the book. It is not a history of the Mormon Church, it is an essay on how religious zealots living at the fringes of society can be simultaneously saintly and evil incarnate. This book is about religion-fueled murder and an examination of how a religion that encourages members to seek personal revelations from God struggles to deal with the inevitable emergence of malevolent crackpots who create "revelations" to justify and magnify their sociopathic behaviors. Krakauer uses a mixture of history (sufficiently accurate and annotated for his purpose), interviews, and his own insight to create an illuminating, "can't put it down" book.
Rating: 
Summary: Anti-Mormon claptrap
Review: This book tries to do for Mormonism what the Protocols of the Elders of Zion does for Judaism, and is just as blatantly anti-Mormon as that tome is anti-Semitic. The central premise of Krakauer's book, based on antecdote and innuendo, seems to be that if you grew up in a mainstream Latter-day Saint family, you're just a couple of philisophical shifts away from becoming a wild-eyed homicidal religious maniac. Meanwhile, in the real world, millions of Latter-day Saints quietly raise productive, tolerant, law-abiding citizens, whose simple lives of goodness are ultimately the most eloquent refutation possible of Krakauer's rabid stereotyping.
Rating:
Summary: Think about what you think about
Review: Worth reading irrespective of your belief about religon or LDS. An extremely gripping story where JK does an excellent job of placing the central murders of the book within the context of the violent history of the LDS and the growth of FLDS. Although I am sure there are certainly factual errors in the particulars, as is true of almost any book, it is hard to fault the overall examination of the impact of belief and the need to examine one's own beliefs.
Rating:
Summary: Unprofessional and poorly researched
Review: As a fan of his other novels, this book was a great disappointment to read. I have also written about the Mormons and their church while working as a journalist throughout the world, and I have researched many of the same stories. His slant and deceptive writing style were a shame to read from a professional viewpoint. I am familiar with many of the sources he used, and it is unfortunate he chose to focus on those with "bones to pick" with the Mormon culture, so to speak. I didn't feel he was objective at all. Agnostic yes. Objective, no. But hey, if it makes a bestseller, who cares if he's honest? Extremely disappointing coming from Krakauer.
Rating:
Summary: This is a "Must-Read" book!
Review: Krakauer's well-written and meticulously-research book should be an instant eye-opener for anyone who agonizes over the blind loyalty of religious followers who never stop to think about their words or actions. The detailed look into historical and present-day Mormonism should give us all pause to think. Many who read this book will hopefully follow up on some of the other selections recommended by Krakauer, again, both from an historical and a behavioral point of view. There are some chilling modern-day lessons to be learned here. Excellent book!
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