Editors Reads Verdict
Krakauer at his most ambitious — the dual narrative works brilliantly, and the result is both a gripping true crime account and a serious examination of how revelation and religious certainty can lead to atrocity.
What We Loved
- The dual narrative structure is perfectly calibrated — the historical and contemporary threads illuminate each other
- Krakauer's research is thorough and his engagement with his subject is genuinely fair
- The book raises profound questions about faith, revelation, and religious authority without dismissing belief
Minor Drawbacks
- The LDS Church objected strenuously to the book's characterizations, and some critics found Krakauer's framing of mainstream Mormonism tendentious
- The true crime elements occasionally feel subordinate to the historical survey
Key Takeaways
- → Religious revelation is unfalsifiable, which is what makes it both powerful and potentially dangerous
- → The history of the LDS church involves violence and revision that its official narrative minimizes
- → Fundamentalism is not a distortion of a pure original but a possible reading of founding documents
| Author | Jon Krakauer |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Pages | 372 |
| Published | July 15, 2003 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Non-Fiction, True Crime, History |
Under the Banner of Heaven Review
Under the Banner of Heaven is Jon Krakauer’s most ambitious book — a work that uses a violent crime as the entry point for a comprehensive history of the Latter-day Saint movement and an examination of what happens when religious certainty is taken to its logical extreme.
The crime is the 1984 murders of Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter by her brothers-in-law Ron and Dan Lafferty, fundamentalist Mormons who believed they were executing a revelation from God. Krakauer uses the Lafferty case as the contemporary anchor for a narrative that moves fluidly through the full history of the LDS church — the founding visions of Joseph Smith, the practice of polygamy, the mass migration to Utah, the government’s attempt to suppress polygamy, and the fracturing of the movement into mainstream LDS and the various fundamentalist splinter groups that refused the 1890 Manifesto abandoning plural marriage.
The dual structure allows Krakauer to do something that simple true crime cannot: to show the Lafferty murders not as an aberration but as an extreme expression of premises that lie within the founding documents and history of the tradition. This is also the book’s most contested claim — the LDS Church objected that Krakauer was unfairly implicating mainstream Mormonism in acts it condemns. The debate this created is itself instructive about how religious institutions manage their histories.
Krakauer’s great quality as a writer is that he takes his subjects seriously. He is genuinely interested in what it would feel like to believe what the Laffertys believed, and his attempt to enter that perspective makes Under the Banner of Heaven more disturbing and more honest than most true crime.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Under the Banner of Heaven" about?
A double narrative: the murder of a Mormon woman and her infant daughter by fundamentalist brothers who believed they were acting on divine revelation, intertwined with the full history of the Latter-day Saint movement from Joseph Smith to the present day. A rigorous examination of religious fundamentalism and faith.
What are the key takeaways from "Under the Banner of Heaven"?
Religious revelation is unfalsifiable, which is what makes it both powerful and potentially dangerous The history of the LDS church involves violence and revision that its official narrative minimizes Fundamentalism is not a distortion of a pure original but a possible reading of founding documents
Is "Under the Banner of Heaven" worth reading?
Krakauer at his most ambitious — the dual narrative works brilliantly, and the result is both a gripping true crime account and a serious examination of how revelation and religious certainty can lead to atrocity.
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