The Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge is hosted by Long and Short Reviews. This week’s topic is: best nonfiction book I’ve read.
I’m not going to say it’s the absolute best nonfiction book I’ve ever read, but I really did enjoy Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. Living in a town with an extremely large LDS population, the subject matter drew my interest immediately.
Despite growing up amongst Mormons, I honestly had no knowledge of their faith aside from a few things I learned from the visiting missionaries a family friend hosted when I was a kid. The author goes back and forth between laying out the history of the foundation of the church and the murders that were enacted out of misguided faith. His approach worked for me. If he’d gone in and said, “Ron and Dan Lafferty murdered their sister-in-law and niece for religious reasons” and left it at that, it wouldn’t have been nearly as compelling. However, because he traced the roots of the church, explained how fundamentalism took hold, and applied it to the acts of the Lafferty brothers, it all made a dark sort of sense.
Full disclosure: I picked this book up after my daughter and I watched the Hulu series based off the murders and the book. The show was engaging and well done, however I felt like there was more to know, so I searched out the source material. Now, I want to go back and rewatch it to see how accurate it was.
Honorable mention: Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristen Kobes Du Mez. This was an informative and eye-opening about white evangelicalism and its ties to politics.
And yes, I do have a bad habit of going down rabbit holes in regards to fundamentalist religions. Heaven help anyone who decides to check my Netflix and Discovery+ watch histories.
Nerdy Reader Girl 
Ooh, those both sound very interesting!
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I found them both to be very informative and eye opening!
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Jesus and John Wayne caught my eye.
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It really brought a lot of things into perspective and explained a lot for me. I hope you like it if you do read it.
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Under the Banner of Heaven was certainly eye-opening. Have you watched the miniseries? It remakes the book so that it tells a story of one person (the police officer investigating the murders) but it is well-done. Here is my list of nonfiction favorites. I am new to the link-up and giving it a try today.
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Yes! It’s actually what made me hunt down a copy of the book. Thanks for visiting!
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I’ve read Krakauer’s book on that kid who died in Alaska, but not this one. Will have to take a look!
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He seems to be pretty popular. I’m definitely going to have to read his other books. This one was really engaging.
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I’ve heard good things about both of those, but I haven’t read either of them. Great choices!
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They were both very good! And infuriating at times.
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Oh, I really ought to read both of these. I read Missoula by Krakauer and it was shocking but so important.
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I hoe you do! I found them both very frightening and enlightening at the same time.
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