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Under the Banner of Heaven

By Jon Krakauer

(32)

| Hardcover | 9781405032803

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Book Description

Critics

God Told Me to Kill You

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer Reviewed by Doug Brown Powells.com On July 24, 1984, two fundamentalist Mormon brothers brutally murdered their sister-in-law and her baby girl, believing they were fulfilling a rev ... (read full critics)

powells published on Sat, 24 Sep 2011

Under the Banner of Heaven By Jon Krakauer

Whether he's tracing a young man's doomed journey into the Alaskan wilderness, as he did with Into The Wild, or chronicling an ill-fated expedition to scale Mount Everest, his focus for Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer is fascinated by human behavior that ... (read full critics)

bookpage published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

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6 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

Great book. It shed light on a lot of Mormon history. I am sure some of it is quite debatable, but it is very interesting none the less.

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Dave Sanders said on Feb 25, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

I read this in 2004; opened my eyes to thinking about faith and how it can lead to such destruction. It started me on the path to find out about beliefs, and to look at my agnosticism, which led me to atheism.

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eudaemonian said on Mar 18, 2006 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

“But some things in life are more important than being happy. Like being free to think for yourself”

My interest for fundamentalist Mormonism and polygamy was arisen by the HBO TV-show ‘Big Love’. So when I heard from a friend about this book, I just had to read it. I expected entertainment reading about fictional characters set up in a world and in a cultural environment so different than the one ... (continue)

My interest for fundamentalist Mormonism and polygamy was arisen by the HBO TV-show ‘Big Love’. So when I heard from a friend about this book, I just had to read it. I expected entertainment reading about fictional characters set up in a world and in a cultural environment so different than the one I was brought up in. Then I found out this is a non-fiction book which actually discouraged me from reading it for almost two years because I thought it might be boring.
Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I came around to it once again just to realize that I was very much mistaken in that assumption: Krakauer knows how to catch your attention. He goes back and forth between a murder happened in 1984 because of religious beliefs and the story of Mormonism itself showing how violence is a sort of fil rouge in it. Also, we’re shown how the charisma of certain individuals in the end can influence the beliefs of millions of people or the fate of a mother and her daughter. Moreover, we can see, from the point of view of psychiatrists and psychologists, how extremists, so often labelled as crazy, are actually as crazy as any believer in facts not explainable by reason.
I particularly appreciated the Author’s Remarks in which Krakauer deals with the critics made to the book by LDS exponents.

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Unworldly Northman said on Feb 9, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

In Under the Banner of Heaven, Krakauer explores the underpinnings of a heinous religiously motivated double murder. In doing so, Krakauer navigates the Mormon world, in particular its fundamentalist offshoots. While an eye opening study, Krakauer had a hard time weaving together his Mormon ... (continue)

In Under the Banner of Heaven, Krakauer explores the underpinnings of a heinous religiously motivated double murder. In doing so, Krakauer navigates the Mormon world, in particular its fundamentalist offshoots. While an eye opening study, Krakauer had a hard time weaving together his Mormon history lesson with the story of the '84 murders.
Krakauer left me feeling unsure of where he was going at times, and spends a considerable time stuffing stories in about Mormon Fundamentalists that had little bearing on the '84 murders. Overall, the book read like Krakauer wanted to take Mormon Fundamentalism, Mormonism, and perhaps religion broadly, to task while the '84 murders where just a freak side show to prove his point. As a critic of Mormonism, Krakauer would have better achieved this goal by being direct about his intentions and making solid arguments toward this end. Or perhaps, he was just unsure what the main point he was driving at.

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Michael Caplan said on Nov 23, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Author simultaneously sensationalizes and downplays. He presents religious beliefs as facts while leaving out information that discredits the statements. It doesn't help that the reader of the audio version sounds like he should be reading a Stephen King novel.

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pktechgirl said on Feb 17, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback