Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer is a well-researched and thoughtful history of the Mormon faith. It uses the 1984 murders of 24-year-old Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter Erica as a springboard to explore the territory of fundamentalism, and uses the Book of Mormon as a source of contention between faith and verifiable fact. Krakauer's storytelling is at its usual high level, and his treatment of the tension between faith and verifiable fact is particularly interesting.