Quotes from Jon Krakauer

Joseph was murdered in Illinois by a mob of Mormon haters in 1844. Brigham Young assumed leadership of the church and led the Saints to the barren wilds of the Great Basin, where in short order they established a remarkable empire and unabashedly embraced the covenant of "spiritual wifery." This both titillated and shocked the sensibilities of Victorian-era Americans, who tended to regard polygamy as a brutish practice on a par with slavery.

a challenge in which a successful outcome is assured isn't a challenge at all.

Fifty-four-year-old Tom Green is a fat, bearded man with a receding hairline, thirty-two children, and five wives

Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that cares nothing for hope or longing.

In fact, most women who are sexually assaulted do not resist. The fear is overwhelming. They often feel helpless. Sometimes they make a conscious choice not to resist because they are afraid if they resist, they will be hurt even worse.

As his sixth wife, Debbie became a stepmother to Blackmore's thirty-one kids, most of whom were older than she was. And because he happened to be the father of Debbie's own stepmother, Mem, she unwittingly became a stepmother to her stepmother, and thus a stepgrandmother to herself.

Even individuals we admire can have skeletons in their closet.

You have to remember what a comfort religion is. It provides all the answers. It makes life simple. Nothing makes you feel better than doing what the prophet commands you to do… If you want to know the truth, I think people within the religion are probably happier, on the whole, than people on the outside. But some things in life are more important than being happy. Like being free to think for yourself.

According to many peer-reviewed studies, a large percentage of the victims of non-stranger rapes "actually feared they were going to be killed," even when "there was no weapon and no overt violence." Thompson

When you are explaining, you're losing...

truest of true believers, Taylor was not about to compromise the most sacred principles of the Kingdom of God to appease the church's Gentile oppressors.

drunk guys who may have 'made mistakes' nearly always get the benefit of the doubt. Drunk girls, however, do not." Compounding

Ambiguity vanishes from the fanatic's worldview; a narcissistic sense of self-assurance displaces all doubt. A delicious rage quickens his pulse, fueled by the sins and shortcomings of lesser mortals, who are soiling the world wherever he looks. His perspective narrows until the last remnants of proportion are shed from his life. Through immoderation, he experiences something akin to rapture.

los títulos y honores carecían de importancia.

brooding on a Colorado barstool, picking unhappily at my existential scabs

As an obedient Saint, he had already pledged not to drink, smoke, take illegal drugs, ingest caffeine, masturbate, or engage in premarital sex.

In the morning he called together five trusted Mormon leaders and, "with broken spirit," informed them that God had revealed to him the necessity of relinquishing "the practice of that principle for which the brethren had been willing to lay down their lives." To the shock and utter horror of the other men in the room, President Woodruff explained that "it was the will of the Lord" that the church stop sanctioning the doctrine of plural marriage.

But men have been committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankind began believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions.

You hear that rape victims avoid sex afterwards. But it's actually just as common for some victims to become promiscuous in self-destructive ways.

As she studies the pictures, she breaks down from time to time, weeping as only a mother who has outlived a child can weep, betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure.

traumatized people find themselves reenacting some aspect of the trauma scene in disguised form, without realizing what they are doing….There

Lo que quiero decir es que no necesitas tener a alguien contigo para traer una nueva luz a tu vida. Está ahí fuera, sencillamente, esperando que la agarres, y todo lo que tienes que hacer es el gesto de alcanzarla. Tu único enemigo eres tú mismo y esa terquedad que te impide cambiar las circunstancias en que vives.

Many traumatized people expose themselves, seemingly compulsively, to situations reminiscent of the original trauma….Freud thought the aim of repetition was to gain mastery, but clinical experience has shown that this rarely happens; instead, repetition causes further suffering for the victims or for people in their surroundings. In

Joseph Smith and the sacred history of Mormonism; more than four hundred of these fraudulent artifacts were purchased by the LDS Church (which believed they were authentic), then squirreled away in a vault to keep them from the public eye.