Customer Reviews

Inside the World of Warren Jeffs: The Power of Polygamy

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If this had been the first book I read on the FLDS or other polygamists groups I may have liked it more. However, I'd already read several by the time I got my hands on this one and found it to be a huge disapointment. With a title like "Inside The World Of Warren Jeffs" I expected this book to be about Warren Jeffs. Other than chapter one and a few chapters near the end the book, it doesn't really take us into the World of Warren Jeffs and has inacurate facts about his arrest. If you have read "Child Brides" also by Carole A. Western then you have pretty much read this one since its basically a longer version of the same book. Also the author changes names and dates for the protection of the women she interviewed, with the new dates not making any sense at all. The first woman Julia Jefferson, who is the mother of the other girls interviewed, is married March 1993. As the book goes on to tell the stories of her adult children and their children you realize it would have be at least the year 2015 to make any sense. I would recommend many other books before this one, "Escape" by Carolyn Jessop, "Stolen Innocence" by Elissa Wall, "Under The Banner Of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer, "When Men Become Gods" by Stephen Singular, "Daughter Of The Saints" by Dorothy Allred Solomon, "His Favorite Wife" by Susan Ray Schmidt, "The Secret Lives Of The Saints" by Daphne Bramham and many more. Basically any book you could pick would be better than this one!

First of all, this was a great book! Somewhere in the middle of the book, I went from feeling very sorry for these women, to actually being sort of mad at them. Some of these same women continued to find yet another Polygamy family even after leaving a horrible one.
I feel mostly sorry for the children :(
Great book otherwise !!

While this book is worth reading, it is not about Warren Jeffs as anyone might expect from the title. While it does tell about the women in polygamy the dialog in most of these stories reads like that in a harlequin novel. Since I was expecting to learn about the life of Warren Jeffs I was disappointed.

I could not put this book down. I ordered it in a time where polygamy was all over the news. A ranch down in Texas was raided & 400+ children taken out of there, with only 100+ mothers. I thought this book really gave you a great idea of what it was like to live believing in this horrible religion of FDLS. It is sickening. I found it to be horrifying that young boys are tossed out of the community as to not be "competition" with the old men for the child bearing women!! I can't even believe there are people in the world that would believe this type of thing, but this book really gave me an understaing first hand of what it really is like. As a woman, you are basically stuck, you have no rights of your own, your children can be taken from you & raised as someone else's & you can be given to another husband if someone else sees fit. The "first wife" keeps track of the "sister wives" menstrual cycles, as to know when to let them sleep with her husband to produce as many children as they can. Children are abused, as are sister wives most times. Sometimes only the MAIN family eat well, dress well, etc, depending on the views of the husband. The sister wives & children eat scraps & ketchup sandwiches & wear rags, sewn together, while the first wife & their children together eat like royalty & wear new clothes. All to get a good spot in Heaven. I love this book, it is a bizarre religion, so I was in AWE alot, but it is a great inside view of their life. I read this book in 3 days flat. It was wonderful!

Using the FLDS raid in Texas, it allowed me to see that religion can have a profoundly psychological powerful effect on people's thought processes, and the extent of this control.

I could not voluntarily imagine consenting to have a daughter 'married' off to somebody old enough to at least be her father. I also would like to definitively know who the father of my children are, personally being creeped out by group pregnancies.

The book stresses that the effects of religion program the followers of the FLDS to honestly believe that this is 'the right thing' for them and their families, however they are arranged.

Not defending the practices, it provides outsiders such as myself with a fresh examination of why people end up in these places and the improbability of voluntarily leaving. We could not get such a perspective from either reading the newspaper and/or watching our local newscasts. While focusing on rescuing the children, those mediums were ignoring how their parents originally arrived at the ranch. So such a book fils a critical information void which had been previously unadressed.

It's not going to ever be a best-seller, let alone in the upcoming year. But this title might help clear the air about a story remaining in the headlines.

I had purchased this book for a directed study on polygamy, and was greatly disappointed by it. It is very difficult to read with many commas incorrectly placed throughout the sentences, words that seem to be missing or sentences that don't make sense. There is very little about Warren Jeffs, which was a huge letdown considering the title makes it seem as if it were a very informative book about the FLDS prophet. I would not suggest this book for anyone who is curious to learn about the FLDS or other polygamist religions in America, I'm even removing it from the course list of books. For those who are interested, check out some of the other books reviewers have recommended, such as "Escape" by Caroline Jessop or some of Dorothy Allred Solomon's novels about the Allred polygamist group. Don't spend the money on this Jeffs book.

Dr. Western's publisher obviously doesn't even take the time to have a few interns proofread their books. I've never read such a poorly written book. Besides the fact that it is NOT ABOUT WARREN JEFFS as the title claims, I find it hard to believe that it isn't purely fiction. It reads like a young adult romance set in an FLDS compound. Save your money - and your time - and buy any other book about polygamy.

And although you "should never judge a book by the cover," think about this... There is a young girl with a fancy updo hairstyle and makeup on the cover. The background of the cover seems to be red satin sheets. Anyone with even minimal knowledge of the FLDS would know that fancy hair, makeup and the color red are all not allowed in their culture.

This is possibly the most poorly written book that I have ever read. It was difficult for me to break through the horrible syntax and flawed semantics produced by this author as "fact-based-fiction" to find anything worth taking away with me to use as reference or revelation of the crime of modern-day polygamy. Told from the viewpoints of fictitious women in an equally ficticious multi-generational polygamous enclave hidden somewere in Utah or Arizona or Colorado (I couldn't tell you which--the setting kept changing), the author attempts to depict the lives of women who have been born into positions of chattel within a community of god-men who battle for control of the fortunes of the faithful and the de jure title of "most fertile & righteous man." Beatings, toture, rape of minors---nothing was presented here that the general population hasn't already been informed of by the national media. A far better read would be either Carolyn Jessup's "Escape" or Elisa Wall's "Stolen Innocence." [...].

Dear Professor Western:

I LOVED YOUR BOOK. My teacher says it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
I have read a lot of books on polygamy, but I liked yours the best of all because it talks about all kinds of polygamous groups in America. It really is a different "world". I intend to do my research paper on your study. I was sorry to hear that some polygamous people are giving you a hard time for telling the truth. I THINK THE MEDIA AND EVERYBODY SHOULD READ THIS BOOK BECAUSE IT SO DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER 'ESCAPE' TYPE BOOKS. It explains why polygamist men behave like they do, and all their different doctrines--fascinating. Keep up the good work, I learned a lot. - Thanks Rick.