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3.95 AVERAGE
3.95 AVERAGE
This was a book club book and it took me down to the last day to finish it. Part of the problem is my child is a similar age to Erica Lafferty. Whenever I tried to read before bed I'd be up hours just thinking about it. I didn't find the book to be very cohesive. It was hard to follow and pick back up again; in fact only two people in the book club finished the book. I'd also like more information on the non-fundamentalist Mormons. It was great for discussion- so a great book club book but I couldn't/wouldn't read this for pleasure. I found the 19th Wife much better at exploring the history of Mormons while following a modern day (fictional) story.
dark
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
While I found this book pretty interesting and I learned a lot (for example, I didn’t really know that Polygamy was still a thing, had never heard of the Mountain Meadow Massacre, and didn’t know much about Mormon beliefs in general), I found the book somewhat disorganized. I’m still not totally sure what the thesis of this book was. Was it a true crime book? A history of the Mormon church? A look at fundamentalism in general? It was sort of a soup of all of these topics and I came away unclear about which one was dominate.
Also, I am not a Mormon and have always considered the Mormon religion outlandish. To me Joseph Smith was an extremely successful con artist who wanted so badly to have sex outside his marriage and justify it that he made up a whole religion and pressured people to follow him. However, I have to agree with Mormon critics that this book was very much biased. The mainstream Mormon faith and the FLDS fundamentalist offshoot seem pretty unrelated, and yet Krakauer seems to link them as if they are the same.
Overall 3 stars.
Also, I am not a Mormon and have always considered the Mormon religion outlandish. To me Joseph Smith was an extremely successful con artist who wanted so badly to have sex outside his marriage and justify it that he made up a whole religion and pressured people to follow him. However, I have to agree with Mormon critics that this book was very much biased. The mainstream Mormon faith and the FLDS fundamentalist offshoot seem pretty unrelated, and yet Krakauer seems to link them as if they are the same.
Overall 3 stars.
dark
emotional
medium-paced
I read this expecting it to be another story of life in the Colorado FLDS, and it is that, but it's also much more. The heart of it is the story of Ron and Dan Lafferty (part of an unrelated fundamentalist Mormon cult) who murdered the young wife and infant daughter of their brother Allen because they saw her as a threat to their faith and family.
And because Ron received revelations from God telling him to "remove" them.
Krakauer does a masterful job of researching not only the story of the Laffertys but the history of the LDS itself and why its fundamentalist sects so easily turn to violence. In my reading of escapees from the Colorado City FLDS, one thing is stressed over and over: Warren Jeffs taught Blood Atonement, the belief that some sins cannot be purified by Christ's blood and must be washed away with the sinner's own, but it was never practiced. No matter what horrors the writers endured during their time in the cult, they insist, no one was ever actually sacrificed under the prophet's orders.
Now I understand that this must apply only to that specific community, and even then probably only within the lifetimes of the individual writers. Because Blood Atonement is something that early Mormons under Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and modern fundamentalists in their little cults, have always done. And they're still doing it. It's a fundamental doctrine of the faith, right up there with plural wives and not working on Sunday.
Krakauer shows us, in this well-researched, heavily annotated, and extremely readable book how Joseph Smith, a charismatic, illiterate farmer who couldn't keep his pants on, created the quintessential American religion. Not to spread the truth of Christ or seize continents for his king, but to justify his lusts for women, power, and blood by convincing people that he was the prophet of the Lord foretold in the Old Testament. Obviously the NT doesn't much figure in his philosophy, or that of his fundamentalist followers. These followers are a nightmare for many of their children, and sometimes the odd gentile who gets in their way, but I'm certain Old Joe would be proud.
And because Ron received revelations from God telling him to "remove" them.
Krakauer does a masterful job of researching not only the story of the Laffertys but the history of the LDS itself and why its fundamentalist sects so easily turn to violence. In my reading of escapees from the Colorado City FLDS, one thing is stressed over and over: Warren Jeffs taught Blood Atonement, the belief that some sins cannot be purified by Christ's blood and must be washed away with the sinner's own, but it was never practiced. No matter what horrors the writers endured during their time in the cult, they insist, no one was ever actually sacrificed under the prophet's orders.
Now I understand that this must apply only to that specific community, and even then probably only within the lifetimes of the individual writers. Because Blood Atonement is something that early Mormons under Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and modern fundamentalists in their little cults, have always done. And they're still doing it. It's a fundamental doctrine of the faith, right up there with plural wives and not working on Sunday.
Krakauer shows us, in this well-researched, heavily annotated, and extremely readable book how Joseph Smith, a charismatic, illiterate farmer who couldn't keep his pants on, created the quintessential American religion. Not to spread the truth of Christ or seize continents for his king, but to justify his lusts for women, power, and blood by convincing people that he was the prophet of the Lord foretold in the Old Testament. Obviously the NT doesn't much figure in his philosophy, or that of his fundamentalist followers. These followers are a nightmare for many of their children, and sometimes the odd gentile who gets in their way, but I'm certain Old Joe would be proud.
I really enjoyed the insight in this book into a culture that I know very little about. That being said, I'm afraid this book was a bit too detail-oriented for the most anal of readers (i.e., me). I found myself bored at times and skimmed a great portion of it. Not Krakauer's best work, but not bad either.
dark
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
It took me over 11 hours to read this book. That has to be some kind of record for me and I felt every minute of it. This book was highly educational of the history of Mormonism and its leaders and ideals and everything, which is beneficial if that’s what you want to read about. That’s not what I thought this book was when I selected it but I was committed to finishing it. It did open my eyes to some things and I now know more about the history of this religion than any other but it wasn’t really my style. It was a well researched and well written book that made me feel dumb for not constantly understanding what was being said.