Under the Banner of Heaven
- 399
- Pages
- about 7 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 7 weeks on the list, peaked at #7
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Our view
“Under the Banner of Heaven” sets a double murder carried out in God’s name beside the history of Mormonism, to unsettling effect. Jon Krakauer moves between the church’s origins, the fundamentalist groups that split from it and the Lafferty case itself. Some readers, even those hardened to the genre, find one perpetrator’s own account of the killings too much to bear and skip it.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is a nonfiction book by author Jon Krakauer, first published in July 2003. He investigated and juxtaposed two histories: the origin and evolution of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a modern double murder committed in the name of God by brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who subscribed to a fundamentalist version of Mormonism.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.8 across 424 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 74% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Rankings average of 8.2. That is how 7.9 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.6 | 25 | 6% |
| Google Books | 7.0 | 31 | 7% |
| Hardcover | 7.9 | 368 | 87% |
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
