3 of 3 members found this review helpful.
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I started reading this book thinking that it would mostly concern religious fundamentalist groups that broke off from the LDS church. It starts out talking about a pair of brothers that was associated with these types of religious groups, who ultimately decided to kill their sister-in-law and her infant girl. The author tries to delve into the religious background of these two individuals and see if the history of their beliefs could be to blame for their behaviour. In fact, I cannot come to any conclusion other than that it was his intention to absolve these murderers of their responsibility by presenting a believeable "history" of their faith.
It almost seemed to me like two authors had written this book. One, who is a great non-fiction author, who takes the facts as they stand and presents them in such a way that those who read the information feel like they are getting those facts in truth. These parts of the book are exclusively involved with the Lafferty brothers, the polygamist fundamentalist groups, the murders, and the resulting trials.
The second "author" relates the details with seeming vehemence for, and hateful feelings toward, the topic of interest. These sections of the book include those dealing with the first three prophets of the LDS church (Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John Taylor), the dealings of early members of the LDS church, and interactions between these early members and those not of the LDS faith. If all of the facts within this book were to be removed, and the chapter order switched around, one could still quite easily find those chapters that relate to the LDS church by the deroggatory and finger-pointing descriptions that were used in the text to relay those "facts". There are, indeed, many facts concerning the early LDs church and their prophets in this book, but their words, actions, and reasoning have been so twisted that anyone reading this book could definitively say that in no way is the information presented in this book what one could call "history".
Even after finishing the book, I can't say for sure whether or not Krakauer took the facts about the LDS church and then inserted his own bias against them within the pages, or if he took the facts from "biased histories" and then just transferred them across to his pages. I would put forth that either action is deplorable on his part. Non-fiction histories should NOT be biased. I'm sure that there are many who would state that there is no such thing as an "unbiased history". There are, however, many different sources for these times in the history of America, and (I believe) that if an author is going to try to write a "non-fiction" book, that he should make every effort to be sure that he's reporting the actual truth, and not some skewed viewpoint. The author himself states that the fact that the emergence of the LDS church is recent enough that it has been laid open for scrutiny, unlike much more ancient religions. He should have been aware that this also leaves it open for any opponents of the religion to insert their false claims into the mix, and tarnish its history.
The bias present in this book is on par with that which I would expect to find in the historical annals of the American Civil war, as told by a die hard confederate. Or even, a retelling of the New Testament as viewed by a pharisaical Jew. In fact, in light of the LDS church's claim that their church is nothing more than the same church as that set up by Jesus Christ and that the Lafferty brothers were only "victims" of their faith, I'm surprised that he didn't have a re-telling of the New Testament scene where Simon Peter cuts off the ear of the high-priest's servant and is afterward healed by Jesus. He could have stated that it must have been Jesus trying to manipulate the man to believe on him through this violent act. The connections that Krakauer passes along in this book concerning the LDS church and its prophets are very much on par with something of this magnitude.
I am also very surprised that a publishing company would submit a book like this for sale. The vocabulary present in the sections concerning the LDS church and its beginnings can only be construed as that of having heavy opinion and bias present in the supposedly "non-fiction" text. By no means should this book be touted as non-fiction. In fact, it's very far from that.
I'm sure that there will be numerous Mormons that will throw other reviews up about this book saying that everything in it is absolutely false, and that no one should listen to anything that this book says. There will also be copious proponents of the book who say that the Mormons should take this book and re-evaluate their religion. The truth of the matter is that this book should have never been published in the non-fiction realm; it shouldn't have made it any further than the Anti-Mormon shelf of the local Christian book store, because that is all that this book is. It takes the stand that the Lafferty brothers killed two individuals, and that their actions can be placed at the feet of this religion that supposedly spawned them. This idea is absolutely ridiculous, and an affront to the ideal of "non-fiction" in it basest sense.
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WriterDan wrote this review Wednesday, November 15 2006.
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