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Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith | 
 enlarge | Author: Jon Krakauer
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  702 reviews
Sales Rank: 681
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 1400032806
Dewey Decimal Number: 289.33
EAN: 9781400032808
ASIN: 1400032806
Publication Date: June 8, 2004
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Amazon.com
In 1984, Ron and Dan Lafferty murdered the wife and infant daughter of their younger brother Allen. The crimes were noteworthy not merely for their brutality but for the brothers' claim that they were acting on direct orders from God. In Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer tells the story of the killers and their crime but also explores the shadowy world of Mormon fundamentalism from which the two emerged. The Mormon Church was founded, in part, on the idea that true believers could speak directly with God. But while the mainstream church attempted to be more palatable to the general public by rejecting the controversial tenet of polygamy, fundamentalist splinter groups saw this as apostasy and took to the hills to live what they believed to be a righteous life. When their beliefs are challenged or their patriarchal, cult-like order defied, these still-active groups, according to Krakauer, are capable of fighting back with tremendous violence. While Krakauer's research into the history of the church is admirably extensive, the real power of the book comes from present-day information, notably jailhouse interviews with Dan Lafferty. Far from being the brooding maniac one might expect, Lafferty is chillingly coherent, still insisting that his motive was merely to obey God's command. Krakauer's accounts of the actual murders are graphic and disturbing, but such detail makes the brothers' claim of divine instruction all the more horrifying. In an age where Westerners have trouble comprehending what drives Islamic fundamentalists to kill, Jon Krakauer advises us to look within America's own borders. --John Moe
Product Description
Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. He now shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders, taking readers inside isolated American communities where some 40,000 Mormon Fundamentalists 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.
At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.
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JON KRAKAUER is the author of Eiger Dreams, Into the Wild, and Into Thin Air, and is editor of the Modern Library Exploration series.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 697 more reviews...
 Compelling Non-Fiction July 5, 2008
This is the most compelling non-fiction book I have read. This is a true crime told stunningly, a great weave of the history of the Mormon church, amazingly well-researched. Krakauer is a true authority on his subject. What he does best is stay out of the way of the narrative, letting his interest drive the book, and allow him to tell the most important and crucial parts of the stories.
You Won't be able to put it down! June 9, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Incredible this is going on in America!! Greta book well written! Please write more on this subject! Especially liked the unbiased historical overview of morman religion!
Excellent Account of America's Subculture! June 2, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Jon Krakauer has climbed Mount Everest and lived to write and tell about it. Now, he writes about the subculture of America's polygamous culture. He writes about the FLDS and UEP who are both discommunicated by the official Mormon Church who stopped the practice of polygamy in 1890s. Remember, the official Mormon Church does not condone or condemen enough of the polygamous practice of their discommunicated members of the FLDS. Krakauer writes about the growth and the secrecy for obvious reasons. Most escapees refuse to return to their compounds and former lives. They might dress like the Amish but they are not Amish at all. They are taught to fear the outside world and outsiders or gentiles which includes Jews and other Mormons. The FLDS and UEP believe that the Mormon Church has sold the practice of polygamy out as a way for acceptance in America. THe Mormons have grown and flourished in the world despite the polygamous monkey on their back. Not all polygamous families are like the ones depicted in the fictional cable show, Big Love. Not all are functioning. Women are treated like cattle and breed babies. The girls are brought up to be mothers and wives at young ages. The boys who are seen as a threat to the older men in the community as competition are often sent to exile to live on their own in the streets. There are hundreds of lost boys whose only crime was to be teenagers, like girls, catch a movie or television show. In the polygamous communities of FLDS and UEP in Colorado City, ARizona; Hildale Utah; El Dorado, Texas; Bountiful, British Columbia, Canada; there are taught to live without television, radios, or read newspapers. The education system is flawed with edited books and manuals. The children are not taught properly about science or sexuality in general. Sexuality is seen as a necessary evil in order to reproduce more. They are expected to wear long skirts, long pants, long sleeved shirts, and the women's hair is not supposed to be cut but styled like in a braid or like Little House on the Prairie. Even the men must endure heat with long pants and long-sleeved shirts, life is hard enough for both men and women. I don't support the idea of polygamy but I am concerned about the women and the children. The women are mostly mothers and are often victimized by the men if they leave and return. The crimes are numerous and unspoken outside the compound until now. The women who are polygamous wives are almost all born into it. They know of no other life and they have never had the opportunities that other women outside the community. The polygamous wives from outside the communities might have the opportunity and choice after generations of polygamy within their families to make that fateful decision. Not so in the FLDS and UEP, women are assigned husbands at an early age by the head prophet.
There but for" the Grace of God "(?) go you and I May 31, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I loved this book. Krakauer (as Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster) manages to give an even-handed account of a quintessentially controversial topic. This book delivers a detailed but never boring, account of Mormon history, and its relevance to today's America and world. It's the story of the Mormon Church in America, and its division into mainstream and fundamentalist strains. In this story, he provides a rich context through which we can appreciate how it is possible for a religion to be a force for both "good" and "evil". Krakauer gives due credit to the sources of Mormons' amazing and praiseworthy industriousness and indeed countless works of true charity, alongside a formidably well-documented account of Mormonism's power to subvert the minds of Americans who in the end, possess the very same humanity and capacity for "good and evil", and the same freedoms (to leave their faith or remain as reformers within it) as you and me. It shows how young women can find themselves vehement defenders, or vocal critics, either mothers of five by age 28, (with neglected health, and on welfare, living in remote backwater compounds, and married to male elders who convince themselves they have a direct line to God in serial dream "revelations" to add more and more wives), or apostates.
As others write, this book has salience to any students of fundamentalism, in its protean incarnations (e.g. that of the Islamic fascism of Wahabi Muslim jihadists), and students of how racism can be legitimized and rationalized by theological decree(by examining Mormon dogma that elevates Anti Semitism, labels African-Americans as inferior humans, and hypocritically legitimizes self-serving violence against Native Americans--in spite of Joseph Smith's proclamation that American Indians are favored by God).
For me, Krakauer's key achivement is his recounting of HOW EXACTLY, a dogmatic faith works its way into minds of men psychologically, by showing how one's position in the pecking order can blend with his internalization of peer-pressure, sermons, threats, incentives, and disincentives, to render him either beholden to, or transcending, the subversive in his culture. He does this by showing how a believer can apply (or not) his faith's more elevating and virtuous values, and interweave these with an embrace of the best in the broader, shared American culture beyond, to reach a place of personal "goodness" and integrity.
Absolutely terrifying! May 31, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is Jon Krakauer's nonfiction account of the difficulty the justice system has ensuring freedom of religion while dealing with lawbreakers who were, in their words, following God's commands to them. A cornerstone of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints is that God reveals His will personally to His followers. Men only. The book is very complicated to follow moving through the history of the church to the present day and through the stories of many crimes committed in the name of God. I was reading this book and finding it amazing and terrifying just when the Texas FLDS polygamy case began. It gave me insight I never would have had. I had never recognized the vast gulf between the Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) and the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. The power of the elders in FLDS groups is complete. Their ability to ignore laws and get away with it is outrageous. Their growing numbers, growing power, and growing violence is more than scarey.
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