crime and criminals

To me, the key to a good book, fiction or non-fiction, is whether it is told well.

Jon Krakauer is a gifted storyteller, and "Under The Banner Of Heaven" is a very well told story.

In addition to covering the 1984 murder of a woman and her child by self-proclaimed Mormon Fundamentalists (acting, as they claim, on a mission from God), Krakauer takes the time and patience to cover some of the history of the Morman religion. He interweaves historic events with the contemporary storyline and gives a kind of insight not common to a "True Crime" story.

For those wondering, Krakauer takes great care to explicitly draw the line between Mormons and Mormon Fundamentalists. This is a critical point in the book.

I had no information about the Mormon religion or its history and found this book engaging and very well written.

It's a good read, and thats what books are all about. I recommend this book to all.

It is not a new observation that religious zealotry and mental illness can be an extremely destructive combination. This book describes an example--in which Morman fundamentalist brothers (apparently) murder their sister-in-law and infant niece for religious reasons--while informing the reader about the history of the LDS church and its offshoots.
The author takes a subject which could have been dry as dust and made it totally absorbing for this reader who had absolutely no background in the subject matter. Krakauer has the gift for making every one of the diverse subjects he chooses interesting to the lay reader.
Wisely, Krakauer leaves the formulation of any global conclusions about religious wars to the reader, although the implications of the LDS conflicts to the middle east conflicts are obvious.
It should also be noted that the author appears to fairly state--I can't say for sure because I haven't read the source material--the LDS church's historic reliance upon plural marriage, which Church leaders now minimize or deny, without being normative about it.

I had read this author before and liked his work. I checked this book from the public library. I could not have guessed that he grew up Mormon until he tells the reader near the end of the book. There's so much here that I did not know. Fascinating.