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jackiekeating 's review for:
Under the Banner of Heaven
by Jon Krakauer
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.