"Under the Banner of Heaven" is trash from a liberal secular agnostic wha has no training in "history". It is so bad that Ann Coulter specifically targets it in her book "Godless, The Church of Liberalism". The author among other things blames "Christian Fundamentalists" for terrorism and as resposibile for 9/11. So is he lying about that part or just about the Mormons?
In her book “Godless: The Church of Liberalism” Pages 16-17 Ann Coulter writes “In the book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer wrotes of the Bush administration, “This, after all, is a country led by a born-again Christian.... who characterizes international relations as a biblical clash between forces of good and evil. The highest officer in the land, Attorney General John Ashcroft, is a dyed-in-the-wool follower of a fundamentalist Christian sect- The Pentecostal Assemblies of God of America... and subscribes to a vividly apocalyptic worldview that has much in common with key millenarian beliefs held by the Lafferty brothers and the residents of Colorado City”.
The book was highly praised on the Daily Kos' "Literature for Kossacks" list.
Church Response to Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven