Knowledge Brenda Lee
Krakauer’s book routinely violated the basic premise of the study of history, which is to cautiously chronicle modify more than time. Historians don’t get the luxury of pinpointing a couple of watershed moments from the distant past and holding them up as “proof” of this or that current event, as even though absolutely nothing had occurred in the interim. Yet that is what Krakauer’s book did repeatedly, drawing direct lines from Joseph Smith’s or Brigham Young’s actions to the 1984 slaying of Brenda Lafferty and her child. I read Krakauer’s book practically two decades ago, but it is famously replete...