Jon Krakauer’s stock in trade is human behavior in the most extreme of conditions, as seen in his harrowing bestseller Into Thin Air, a firsthand account of disaster on Mount Everest. His latest book takes readers into a world that will seem as remote and forbidding, and all the more alien for existing on American soil: the schismatic, highly isolated groups of Mormon fundamentalists scattered across North America, groups Krakauer likens to the Taliban—and which, it should be noted, have been condemned by the mainstream church. His entry point into the subject is a grisly 1984 double murder committed by two brothers who claimed that God commanded them to kill their sister-in-law and baby niece. By way of finding a root cause, Krakauer also looks back on the tumultuous history of Mormonism—the fastest-growing religion in the country—and finds strains of violence and zealotry that, he argues, are still all too prevalent. Controversial? Oh, you bet. With this audacious work of nonfiction, Krakauer’s climbed down the Himalayan mountains and straight up an active Utah volcano.
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