By Jon Krakauer
ISBN-10: 1400078997
ISBN-13: 9781400078998
Jon Krakauer s literary popularity rests on insightful chronicles of lives carried out on the outer limits. In below THE BANNER OF HEAVEN, he shifts his concentration from extremes of actual event to extremes of spiritual trust inside of our personal borders. on the middle of his e-book is an appalling double homicide devoted by way of Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they got a revelation from God commanding them to kill their innocent sufferers. starting with a meticulously researched account of this divinely encouraged crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding religion. alongside the best way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of the United States s fastest-growing faith, and increases provocative questions on the character of spiritual belief.
Krakauer takes readers inside of remoted groups within the American West, Canada, and Mexico, the place a few forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists think the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably off track whilst it renounced polygamy. Defying either civil specialists and the Mormon institution in Salt Lake urban, the leaders of those outlaw sects are zealots who solution simply to God. Marrying prodigiously and with digital impunity (the chief of the most important fundamentalist church took seventy-five plural other halves, a number of of whom have been wed to him once they have been fourteen or fifteen and he used to be in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets workout absolute regulate over the lives in their fans, and pontificate that any day now the realm could be swept fresh in a typhoon of fireside, sparing basically their so much obedient adherents.
Weaving the tale of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed examine Mormonism s violent previous, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the main winning homegrown religion within the usa, and unearths a tremendously American model of non secular extremism. the result's classic Krakauer, an completely compelling paintings of nonfiction that illuminates an differently confounding realm of human habit.
Read or Download Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith PDF
Similar true crime books
The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers
Bestselling true-crime author Harold Schechter, a number one authority on serial killers, and coauthor David Everitt provide a guided journey during the strange and blood-chilling global of serial homicide. via hundreds and hundreds of specified entries that span the whole spectrum -- the stunning crimes, the notorious perpetrators, and lots more and plenty extra -- they research all angles of a ugly cultural phenomenon that grips our mind's eye.
Battling for her lifestyles . . .
A few days sooner than her twenty sixth birthday, Melissa Schickel back to her Indianapolis domestic and went to mattress. An hour later, she was once yanked from her goals into terror. an outsider held her down, brutally beating and stabbing her.
Melissa fought fiercely. The assailant fled, leaving her to stand an extended highway to restoration from deep-seated worry and post-traumatic rigidity. She tells her particular precise tale as a part of a compelling narrative through bestselling crime specialist M. William Phelps. Her power and braveness will encourage all girls with comparable reviews to consider themselves proudly as survivors—not sufferers.
“Phelps sincerely exhibits how the ugliest crimes can happen within the quietest of suburbs. ” —Library magazine on by no means See Them Again
“Phelps is a true-crime veteran. ”—New York Post
“Anything through Phelps is often an eye-opening adventure. ” —Suspense journal
Chambers of Horror. Monstrous Crimes of the Modern Age
Chambers of Horror is a research of the warped pondering that went into many of the world's such a lot macabre crimes, in addition to a scientific exam of the purpose-built rooms, hidden areas and soundproof dungeons more and more ready for sufferers. From the big "Murder fortress" as soon as utilized by Dr. H. H. Holmes to prey upon these attending the 1893 Chicago World's reasonable to the hand-tooled field stored less than the mattress the place Cameron Hooker stored his "sex slave," this publication covers well-known instances of the previous in addition to many from the fashionable age.
Handbook of Transnational Crime and Justice
Transnational crime and justice will symbolize the twenty first century in comparable method that conventional highway crimes ruled the 20 th century. within the instruction manual of Transnational Crime and Justice, Philip Reichel and Jay Albanese compile most sensible students from all over the world to provide views at the legislation, crimes, and felony justice responses to transnational crime.
- All for the Money. Bribery, Cheats, Swindles and Other Monetary Fraud in Singapore
- Knock On My Door
- Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars
- But I Trusted You. Ann Rule's Crime Files Series, Book 14
Additional info for Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
Sample text
We are not ashamed of our beliefs, and we are certainly not ashamed of our family. . ” Unfortunately for Tom Green, Juab County attorney David O. Leavitt—the younger brother of Utah governor Mike Leavitt—happened to turn on his television one night in 1999 to see Green boasting of his young wives on Dateline NBC. Although Leavitt had long known about Green's polygamous colony out in the west desert, until he saw Green holding forth in prime time, he'd had no intention of prosecuting him. As a child Leavitt had had friends who were the offspring of polygamists, and his own great-grandfather had married a plurality of wives.
The revered prophet described plural marriage as part of “the most holy and important doctrine ever revealed to man on earth” and taught that a man needed at least three wives to attain the “fullness of exaltation” in the afterlife. He warned that God had explicitly commanded that “all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same . . ” Joseph was murdered in Illinois by a mob of Mormon haters in 1844. † In 1856, recognizing the strength of the anti-polygamy vote, Republican candidate John C.
They are prosecuting Tom based on nineteenth-century morals. Now, who cares who sleeps with who? They are all consenting adults.