Prisoner of Zion: Muslims, Mormons and Other Misadventures

by Scott Carrier

An NPR journalist’s riveting exploration of religious fanaticism, terrorism, persecution, and confronting one’s own beliefs in a post 9/11 world. Soon after the World Trade Center towers fell on September 11 2001, it became clear that the United States would invade Afghanistan. Writer and This American Life producer Scott Carrier decided to go there, too. “In a series of remarkable essays, Carrier, raised among Mormons, noted similarities in the beliefs and practices of the Taliban and the Utah church, stressing the fundamentalist pledge of obedience to authority, and revelations and visions from God to a ‘Chosen people.’” Carrier needed to see and experience the Taliban for who are these fanatics, these fundamentalists? And what do they want? ( Publishers Weekly ). Throughout these “engrossing stories of travel interspersed with historical vignettes and the author’s private struggles,” Carrier writes about his adventures―sometime harrowing, sometimes humorous, and always revealing―but also about the bigger problem. Having grown up among the resolute of the Salt Lake City church, he argues it will never work to attack the true believers head-on. The faithful thrive on persecution. Somehow, he thinks, we need to find a way―inside ourselves―to rise above fear and anger ( Kirkus Reviews )

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Religion, Mormonism, Short Stories

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Ron Christiansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I purchased this book for full price (a rare thing for me) right after hearing Scott Carrier read from the book at our faculty convention. He is an interesting character, hard to define into a neat category--and so is this book.

Even if I hadn't heard him speak, I would have known this was going to be a good read just 14 pages in, during the 3rd section called Momosphere, where he says "I used to resist the church. I spoke out against it whenever...I had a chance. But one day a question entered my head--'What if, with the wave of a hand, I could wipe out all of Mormon history...would I do it?' It took me five seconds to realize I would never do it. I'd miss their stories for their mythic value. I'd miss the temple, even though I can't go inside...My identity, the person I have become, is a non-Mormon, an outsider other. If the Mormons were gone then who would I be?"

This passage identifies what I respect in Carrier and seek in others: someone whose life experiences have made them less (not more) likely to sweep aside some culture or belief system which is irritating, wrong, even unjust and discriminatory. To me this is to recognize our interconnections and that meaning is never solid, a modernized object, but rather rhizomatic, tenuous, and corrupted by sin.

Carrier jumps back and forth from stories about Utah and Mormons to that of Islam in the Middle East--interesting parallels if uneven and stretched at times. But then he brings the two strands of fundamentalism together in the last and best section (the one he read from at our convention): "Najibullah in America." It is the story of young boy he meets in Afghanistan, who translates for him and helps Carrier get his stories. Several years later, now at UVU as a professor, Carrier gets Naji to come to Utah, to live amidst another kind of fundamentalism.

The last section might be called the education of Naji AND of Scott Carrier as he helps Naji navigate life in America and to write in a new language with new rules of engagement. But it's also about Carrier's learning as he "settles" for a time as a teacher, at first hating it and then growing to like it even though he is still surrounded by young idealistic and naive Mormons. But the convention is too much for him ultimately--he said in his reading that he is leaving UVU, and the comforts of a salary and health insurance, for the Middle East. I'm both fascinated and bewildered by a person like Carrier who lives on the fringes. Ultimately happy for his voice.

A voice that ends on a somewhat, for Carrier, optimistic note. He argues that there is something going on with his students, having seen the financial crisis and murky motivations for war, who "now come more willing to listen to [his] point of view because they can see they're fucked." A mini-enlightenment in Orem, Utah? Maybe. Still, he admits to the complex forces in a uniquely Carrier-like way: "It's fucking hard to be compassionate, to see our enemy as no different than ourselves."

And here we circle back: Who indeed would Carrier be without the Mormons? Who would Christian Westerners be without Islam? Even who would we be without Al-Queda? Compassion is certainly absolutely fucking hard.

[Jules · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've ever heard Scott Carrier on NPR, you must be familiar with his voice. He speaks in a hushed, measured tone that conveys an world-weary pathos, but can deeply evoke a yearning for political or human ideals that would make us all better people. It's hard not to hear his voice reading his collections as well, you slow down reading and let him take you on this strange journey through war-torn Afghanistan, big brother-esque Myanmar, zionist Salt Lake City, and the wrecked flotsam of his own personal life. This is an edited collection of scattered pieces throughout his freelance journalism career, first printed in magazines or broadcast as radio stories, about extremism and America's attempts to tamp down on threats to democracy, and how stirring the hornet's nest has made these movements stronger and helped enforced the righteousness of the adherents. It also somewhat tracks Carrier's personal development as a journalist, and later as a university professor. It's largely pessimistic in its view of the world, with little rays of hope that shine through, particularly the personal triumph of his former translator in Afghanistan as he comes to school in America. Easily one of my favorite reads of the year.

[Pat Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't remember why I put this book on my list of books to read, but it was there so I got it and read it. It is not fiction, but it is fascinating. The subject matter varies between the Mormon community, Afghanistan's war torn community, Cambodia's community where slave trade is an everyday practice, and some others as well. Carrier puts his attitude into the writing and he is a rebel of sorts. Some of the stuff he thinks and says makes so much sense that I keep it close. One thing that stands out is his thought on religion. He says that he has no problem with beliefs in one God or another or practices that may seem odd. He does have a problem with religious leaders or written laws that say that God has chosen this certain community as his own, and has given them areas of land to own. I liked this thought. It reminded me of the Native American attitude of "How can any human own land. It is here for us to use, and live on, not to own and charge others for the allowance of its use". He cuts to the very core of why and how slavery happens in Cambodia. The statement of where these slaves end up includes the United States. Ponder that for a sec. The majority doesn't, but the fact that any come here and act as slaves at all makes me angry. But who am I to be angry at that? Another heavily discussed subject is the war in Afghanistan and what is really happening there. It will make you stop and think, is this worth it. I guess you would have to ask Cheney. He seemed to think so. The affect on the people who live there is titanic. But he goes into their community as well. They have their own social practices that seem to make no sense, which include killing family members for social mishaps. Carrier pulls no punches with his writing and he doesn't hide his feelings o the stuff he has feelings about. It is hard to read this and go away contented with our human world and how we treat one another. The feel is a raw, hard, sharp look at the things he writes about. I am glad I read it. I would recommend it for anyone who is willing to look at the subject matter with an open mind and who has the ability to read non fiction which for me anyway, slows my reading down. I hope all this makes sense to the readers of this review.

[Emma Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

gave me lots to think about, especially having grown up in SLC as well. I thought his comparison between Mormons and other religious extremists/fundamentalists was interesting to examine. Some parts of the books were very jarring, talking about extremely horrific events and the places in this world experiencing them, told in Carrier’s typical dry tone. His brutal honesty doesn’t always make me like him, but it does make me respect him.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have absolutely no recollection of acquiring this book and therefore had NO expectations of it but it was truly a delight. A rare form of travel journalism that doesn’t come across as preachy, insensitive, judgemental, or disrespectful. There is a good amount of humility and self-reflection in here. And the interspersed stories from the author’s childhood and life in the US worked extremely well as a sort of narrative adhesive. Would absolutely read more from this author.

[Jeffrey Howard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I began this book wondering whether it would be more about Mormons or Radical Islam, and how personal Carrier would get, whether he would be more anecdotal or provide wider social commentary. The cover details were a bit misleading. They gave me the impression I would read a more thorough comparison between Muslims and Mormons--religious fanatics, as understood by Carrier. Instead, Prisoner of Zion is a collection of re-purposed articles previously published in other magazines, later glued together around the very broad themes of religion, Mormons, a journalist's travels in Asia, political revolution, war, and the tired trope of the cantankerous English professor who corrupts the minds of conservative America's youth.

Early in the book, I enjoyed his tongue-in-cheek, but still sympathetic voice as he talked about Mormons and Muslims, like one teases a friend. Toward the end he becomes more misanthropic, and plays the victim, as if it is hard to be a liberal professor in the predominately progressive-friendly world of higher education. Although, it must be precarious at times to be in his position, teaching in ultra-conservative Mormondom, he gets a taste for what it feels like for most conservative, libertarian, classical liberal, and otherwise non-traditional liberal academics who are the real minority perspectives in higher ed: "The people with me in the stands are paying my salary, but if they know what I try to teach they would have me fired. I've been trying to get them to fire me, but I've yet to hear one complaint from the administration, and I've never been told what or how to teach."

Carrier's book lures readers in with a slightly unsettling and playful challenge of religion as played out by a brief scene recounting a made-up--I assume--exchange between two children and their parents, regarding the question of God's existence. It starts the book on a proper note, but I don't see the point in having the same "Scene One" appear again, word for word, at the end of this short tome. His first piece is a warm, gently scolding of Mormonism, with a few snippets from his life growing up among Mormons, as a gentile (from the Mormon perspective). Some of his descriptions made me long for the Beehive state. "This is what I'm used to, living in a bowl, a high desert basin. When I leave town and spend time in flat places I start getting claustrophobic because everything is close up and nothing is far way, and if I stay too long I have panic attacks. I tell this to my friends who live in flat places and they say it is I who live in a claustrophobic place--among the Mormons."

The core of his book is a protest against Zionism, the chosen people mentality he sees among Mormons domestically, and among other religious fanatics abroad. "This is Zionism, and I'm against it, wherever it occurs, because it's nothing but a lie used to justify taking land and liberty from other people. this does pick my pocket and break my bones, and I hope someday it'll be seen by everyone as a ridiculous and archaic notion, similar to the belief that the Earth is flat."

I wasn't particularly impressed by his prose, but I could hear his voice coming through, revealing views he holds passionately. War sucks. American intervention perpetuates more problems abroad (even when non-Americans wish for American imperial involvement). Skepticism of authority is good. Religion is hokey, but charming at times, and when tempered produces lots of good-natured people. Science and reason is all we have, at the end of the day. This is his voice from the dust.

I was hoping for a more in-depth ethnographic study of Mormons. The book lacked that, but had variety--and, it was an easy read. I'd give this book to a friend who wanted to know more about life among Wasatch-front Mormons. They are a fascinating group of people.

[Matthew Fitzgerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carrier's second book opens with a whimsical little short story, a vignette that bookends the whole bit (to unknown purpose, at least to this reader), before delving into a round-up of his reporting work since the beginning of the American war in Afghanistan. His first story sees him aimlessly wandering a recently shattered Afghanistan, and I was annoyed by his reporting "style" of wandering around without knowing anything and offering no insight into what was going on, merely recording his chaotic and (from his distance) often bizarre observations.

But I came to realize, as his reporting went deeper in depth a little more and he was able to examine issues related Afghanistan and Pakistan, and America's broader actions there, he was actually doing a fairly accurate job of conveying an American's perspective abroad: first eager to blindly crash land in the middle of a country, the perceived "land of the enemy," and then a slow realization of what a misguided mess the whole thing was turning into. Whether that's just how Carrier's writing and thinking evolved, or if I was just willing form on the formless, I don't know. It became clear by his later writing and his wanderings that he does have some background knowledge of the countries, the tribal communities that make up the region (in defiance of any lines of a map), and the attitudes people have there.

The books shifts in the latter half to examine Mormons in his native Utah, and I did find Carrier's connections between Mormons and Islamists apt. They both see themselves as wielders of The One Truth, religious certainty they obviously take to different ends these days, but as Carrier relates in his retelling of their history, there was more "use violence against the government to get what we want" overlap that most Mormons should find comfortable. And like the young men in Afghanistan and Pakistan who want to kill Carrier just for being American, his classroom is full of young Mormon students who hold his non-Mormon opinions in similar low esteem.

In the end, I find Carrier's "outlast them, not attack them" parable of Mormon history to be the most important thing to take away from the book. After years of frustrated teaching, he eventually sees even devout Mormon students begin to question their church leaders when their anachronistic ideas start to demonize friends and loved ones and needlessly hold back people (especially women) for no legitimate reason. Those small but important changes at a bigger, more global scale seem to be nudged once-ironclad Mormon zealotry in The One Truth off it's pedestal, and allow human reason to come into play in shaping the community's ideals, goals, and laws.

If Carrier is able to see that change in Utah in his lifetime, maybe applying those attitudes at a global scale around the world might let America enjoy something that resembles peace, rather than endless war.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carrier's essays are honest (sometimes uncomfortably so for the reader), way off the beaten track (one of the pieces here concerns rock and roll in Myanmar), and deadpan funny. He attempts a prank to spite wealthy skiers who use helicopters for access to slopes in his native Utah and nearly has a fatal accident. In Afghanistan, he meets Uzbek strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum, who was connected with a horrific massacre of Taliban prisoners and is still active politically today.

The core of this collection is the story of a translator whom he meets in a war zone and subsequently sponsors into a college program in the States, twisted around accounts of the eccentrics who founded the Church of Mormon (Carrier has been in and out of the faith), and bound with revelations of his sometimes unstable personal life. An example of Carrier's wit, from p. 79:

Prophecy and polygamy often go together. When God speaks to a man and tells him he is the new prophet and must now take charge of the only true church, the next thing He often tells the man is to become a polygamist. Part of the responsibility of being the new prophet is to spread "the seed of David" and produce the new chosen people. This takes a lot of women and a lot of effort.

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scott Carrier is a crazy person. But Scott Carrier knows he is a crazy person. Let him tell you about Mormons anyway. He's going to spend most of his time going on about the Middle-East, but what can you do about that ball of wax?

His conclusions are a little grim. Though they do seem to suggest that homosexual people will fix everything. There's something to that. I mean, that's the conclusion I came to, given his experiences. You can think what you want.

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My son recommended this author to me after listening to his radio broadcasts on NPR. This book is not for the faint of heart, but Mr. Carrier is an excellent narrator and he provides a perspective not familiar to many. I highly recommend this book, as well as Mr. Carrier's 1st book, Running After Antelope.

[James Lockwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great read!!

Occasionally I will find a book that is a pleasure to spend my time with. This is one of them. Pain, observation, redemption. The author has shared much of himself and takes you with him so convincingly you start to believe you were actually with him on these journeys. I so enjoyed it. Thank you.

[Norin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little disjointed for me, but explained some issues for me.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was good. I really like Scott's dispassionate perspective and how he balances taking himself out of the story and also giving you the very personal. I found this a compelling read.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun and scary at the same time.

[Denae · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hm.... not sure what I was expecting, not sure what I learned...

[Dane Sawyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty cool stories about Afghanistan and Utah. The author has some incredible experiences.

[Charlie Quimby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Often, collections of old essays and reportage don't work for me. Some feel like a trip to the pawnshop with a guy who had one salable item and decided he might as well bring along some odds and ends for extra change.

Scott Carrier's Prisoner of Zion might seem that way from a summary description. But he has stitched together the material into a highly readable narrative that, despite the time and place shifts, I read in less than a day.

It opens with a mysterious vignette of a Kennedy-era family eating lunch after church in a family restaurant, the mother asking the kids what they learned from the sermon, the kids doubting God, and the disengaged dad checking the bill as one kid observes a disturbing scene outside at a gas station.

Eight of the 14 main chapters appeared in some form over more than a decade. They span war in Iraq, Afghanistan and its spillover to Pakistan, sex trafficking in Cambodia, Christian heavy metal rock under the Myanmar junta, subverting heli-skiing in the Wasatch Mountains, and historic and contemporary accounts of Mormonism interspersed with Carrier's own unsteady personal life.

An introductory chapter both critiques and accepts the Mormons Carrier grew up with: "I have a problem with only one of their beliefs—that Mormons are God's chosen people and He gave this land to them. This is Zionism, and I'm against it, wherever it occurs..." Then he leads the reader on a tour of his hometown Salt Lake City—its founding and its present incarnation.

In the next chapter, we learn Carrier may have trouble leaving for Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 because he needs his bail bondsman's permission. (An ill-advised run-in with neighborhood junkies led to Carrier being arrested.)

And soon, we see the themes taking shape. We are going to follow an impulsive American with control issues in his personal life as he persistently questions authoritarian cultures that do not like being questioned. Although his methods seem haphazard and his experiences drift away from the big stories, Carrier gives a vivid picture of war and the mundane miseries of authoritarianism, far more revealing than more political or conventional reporting I've seen from the Middle East. In a way, his reports remind me of the on-the-ground graphic work of Joe Sacco from Palestine and Bosnia.

We encounter men who seek order, revenge, sex, love, honor or Godlike status who cloak their desires in righteousness and employ violence when ideology calls for it. Women, of course, are expected to submit. It makes sense to everyone, it seems, and so it works, even for the victims.

In a confrontation with a girlfriend, Carrier describes how he "grabbed her cellphone and threw it against the wall. ... [The cellphone] was what kept her from doing what I knew was right."

Yes, he, too, is a knucklehead who finds freedom exciting and scary, who carries his own self-serving version of the Truth. If only he could make her see it.

Saddled with a house he bought hoping to settle down the girlfriend, he takes a teaching job that seems a globe-hopping radical journalist's ring of hell—mostly Mormon kids brought up in a culture of obedience and communal regulation.

Carrier's impertinent questions are at first no more welcome in Orem, Utah, than in Pakistan. "When the prophet speaks, the thinking has been done."

Gradually, he accepts that he "wasn't going to be able to open their minds by force, as it only caused them to shut more firmly."

It seems to be a lesson that applies to encounters with fundamentalists everywhere from the Taliban to the Bundys. You can't change people who don't want to change. You can only keep asking questions and more questions, listen to their answers and hope they are listening to themselves.

The final chapter recounts his evolution as a teacher, bringing to Utah a boy he met in Afghanistan and the gradual breakthroughs he senses with some of his students. It's as close to hope as a dark thinker will permit himself to go. (Carrier was later denied tenure, not just for his unconventional pedagogy, but his challenges to authority.)

The opening vignette recurs, word-for-word, at the end of the book.

Now, it's revealed as a sort of parable about observation and disengagement, about making minuscule calculations from a safe place while ignoring disaster, and about how God may have left us to repeat our mistakes until we see the folly of insisting on the same answers forever.

[P · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am trying hard to avoid superlatives in writing this. I am trying to describe it and think about it as if I were not a non-Mormon from Salt Lake City, and the stories in here did not have an immediate and personal resonance for me. Here's what I can come up with.

Carrier knows how to make minutiae interesting. His own life story, at least through the glimpses he gives, has given him a knack for explaining bad behavior, bad decisions, and dismal life situations in a way that makes reprobates and rejects of even the most mundane variety seem compelling. But he isn't myopic; rather, he simply seems to understand that enormous geopolitical problems like American wars in Middle East don't need any more think pieces or policy papers. We understand already that horrible, idiotic wars are being waged in our names. We understand already that this is horrible, but the question of "why" it is happening is, unfortunately, largely uninteresting now. Carrier seems to recognize this, but doesn't accept it, and gets mad as hell at those who do. To make us care again, he gets in a car with the Taliban or a 19-year-old translator but without any knowledge whatsoever of what he's doing or how to avoid getting himself killed, and looks at the human beings involved in the conflicts. That they are more like Americans than may be comfortable is not a cliche by the time you have finished the book and read Carrier's well-crafted parallels between the murderous, deluded Taliban of Afghanistan and the murderous, deluded Mormons of Utah.

This is not an anti-Mormon screed, however. That would be easy to write, and Carrier avoids low-hanging fruit like that. He sympathizes with the Mormons, loves the cultural wealth that they provide. More importantly, however, he can humanize them until they don't represent an ideology or a movement, human psychology in general, if at extremes. His portraits, then, are not stories about Mormons and Muslims, but about fanatical and violent people who may happen to be one or the other, but who represent a type we can all recognize and begin to understand. He can do this with both the Mormon Brian David Mitchell in "The One Mighty an Strong" or pedophiles and sexual slave traders in Cambodia in "Human Trafficking in Cambodia." He frames his stories with a mise en scène and a pair of haikus that express rage at the blind of acceptance of horrors like these, but that also take comfort in the ability to spoil that society, to be a fly in the ointment of a people that condemns and despises drinking but will not ask itself how or why a man like Brian David Mitchell could grow up in Utah, blend in among its people, and do what he did almost with impunity:

Before the snow falls
the smell of the furnace
burning the summer's dust.

After the snow falls
all the outdoors
is a refrigerator for my beer.

We see him succeed in breaking through the silence occasionally, but we also see him humbled, finding rooms full of people surprisingly willing to at least discuss the smell of the burning dust and turn a blind eye to the beer for the sake of the joy it brings. When this happens, the author and the reader are forced to confront their own prejudices and blind anger. These are, far and away, the best parts of the collection, and they are scattered liberally throughout every essay.

[Mark Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

As we hone our strategy and niche at Torrey House Press (THP), I am thinking a lot about the West, and the land, and what it means to live in such a beautiful, crazy place. Wallace Stegner spoke of the "geography of hope" and of a culture to match the scenery. Sometime I think, given the predominate culture in Utah, that THP should move to some place like Berkeley where there may be more than one progressive thinker to buy our books. Utah is amongst the reddest of states politically and as such anti-environmentalism is a required political plank for the rank and file here. My heck, as we say, we earmark $300,000 of taxpayer treasure to anti-wolf lobbyists every year even though there is not one known wolf in the entire state. What we really worry about, according to those lobbyists, is MEXICAN wolves. But we are dead last in the nation for per capita education funding. We are anti-immigration, anti-environment, anti-womens' health, pro gun and pro war. The word Taliban often comes to mind.

So it is with a hoot of delight and recognition that I read Scott Carrier say, "It doesn't bother me that Mormons believe God grew up as a human being on a planet circling a sun called Kolob. I'm not upset when they tell me He came to Earth in a physical body and had sex with the Virgin Mary. These beliefs, as Jefferson said, can neither pick my pocket nor break my bones." Carrier says he does have a problem with one belief, " . . . that Mormons are God's chosen people and He gave this land to them. This is Zionism, and I'm against it, wherever it occurs, because it is nothing but a lie used to justify taking land and liberty from other people." Who is this guy? I'm only on page 8 and he's got me.

Carrier goes on to examine why he loves living in Utah anyway. As do I. The next chapter starts with him examining the reason he wants to go to Afghanistan right after 9-11. "I don't believe the news. The news is selling war and we're buying it. We're the richest nation on the planet and Afghanistan is the poorest nation on the planet. It's not war, it's a business, a trap, and we are walking right into it." This guy is good, I think. He's off to Afghanistan where he sees Taliban for himself. He ends up bringing a young man back as a student to Utah County. In the end, lives are changed. Mine was, just sitting in my armchair reading this book.

[Salt Lake City Public Library]

A young boy sits in a restaurant surrounded by displeasing mundanity, absorbed in a horrific scene just across the street, yet neither says nor does anything about it. The opening scene of Scott Carrier’s latest collection of essays, Prisoner of Zion: Muslims, Mormons, and Other Misadventures , shows us that some of the darkest, most evil things are seen in broad daylight, for that is when things are seen with the greatest clarity.

Prisoner of Zion traverses a lot of territory, from angry backcountry skiing in White Pine Canyon to a troubled crossing through the Salang Tunnel in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan, from confronting the ugliness of human trafficking in Cambodia to a frightened rock singer in Burma. This book is not safe—it places you in the mud, the dust and the cold in horrific circumstances where there are so many body parts it is hard to distinguish them from bricks after a wall has exploded. You are not protected by your television screen.

Angry and rich, there is a distance in Carrier’s writing, although it is never flat. At first, I attributed the disassociation to journalistic technique. But halfway through the book, when Carrier is describing his return to Salt Lake City and the culture shock of reentry, he defines the assimilation of what he has experienced by what can be named and described and what cannot. He says the things he can’t name, “stay inside and you live with them, like shrapnel; your body grows around them.” It is these unnameable things that are the cause of his distance and disassociation as a writer.

I want to corner someone and talk about this book, about where it leaves you when you’re finished. I want dialog, to hear what others think about the harsh realities on the page and what words were left out. Not that there are any holes in the narrative. No, the holes are in your soul. Post your comments below, and let’s start a dialogue.

—Donnae Tidwell, Librarian and Nonfiction/Graphic Novel Selector

[Mary Etta · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the first couple of chapters I wondered, "If Carrier's views of Mormon temples, apparently from hearsay, are compared to my personal experience and lack a shred of accuracy why would I think that his travels and observations of Muslims are any more accurate?" So I stopped at page 75. One reviewer who gave it 4 or 5 stars really liked the last chapter, so I decided to read at least that much more. There are so many more well-written, well-researched non-fiction titles, why would I read this.

Learning a little more of the author from one of the reviewers, i.e., taught at UVU in Utah County, might explain it, besides was raised in SLC, that would be tough. His premise of the cultures/communities in which we live making us who we are is probably quite accurate. Some people deal with it better than others. I've had the flip side of his experience and would not trade. Then there is the rest of life ahead.

Ron Christiansen's 5-star review highly praised the last chapter. His praise is well deserved. The last chapter brings together Carrier's journey at least to that point. Thereafter Carrier leaves UVU after failing to get tenure 3-2 with no review.

And so life goes on and everyone continues to figure things out.

[Marty Tomlinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scott Carrier is my all-time favorite "This American Life" contributor, so I was interested to read what he has been up to since he stopped contributing to the show. Mostly putting himself in danger by traveling to some of the most dangerous parts of the world without protection or any real semblance of a plan, and letting his personal life fall apart.

These stories generally fall into two categories: his travels to the war-torn Muslim world, and his observations about the Mormon culture of his hometown Salt Lake City. He has interesting things to say about both, and his unique voice comes through almost as clearly on the page as it does on the radio. But I'm not sure the parallels come through as clearly as he seems to intend them to, and this probably works better as a disconnected set of stories than it does as any kind of thematic whole.

Enjoyable and interesting, but not essential.

[Sean Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came to this book because I love his radio stories. This book has some work that has appeared elsewhere on both radio and print. And while the stories are great in themselves, the unique thing about this book is the way he triangulates his thoughts and experiences working and living among Mormons with his reporting in middle east war zones to illustrate his views on religious faith. I loved this book. Something about the author's way of looking at things and voice come through to make the war reporting come home to me more than other reporting. He has a tendency to despair or look at things darkly and is kind of a radical and will no doubt turn some people off or depress them. But for me this book is amazing and kind of mind blowing. The final chapter is a stunner.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first came across Scott Carrier's work many years ago on This American Life and was surprised to learn he lived in Salt Lake. I then read his first book of essays, Running After Antelope, which I thoroughly enjoyed. His is a unique voice and his stories reflect his own personal journey. I was interested in reading his most recent collection after hearing an interview on RadioWest, http://www.kuer.org/post/83111-prison...
I did not find this collection to be as good as Antelope, but I think the stories make his point about how we find ourselves acting out of fear after 9/11.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great and cohesive book put together from various essays covering two main topics: Mormonism and the war on terror, including the story of Scott's translator Najibullah.

Lots of interesting reflections on how religion and cultural traditions affect behavior, how persecution strengthens a movement, and the role of journalism in society. I love Scott Carrier's voice, and it's strong in this book.

If you like this book, check out his podcast Home of the Brave. Some of the book's pieces have appeared there in abbreviated form along with other old and new work.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED this book! Some of the most enjoyable non-fiction I've ever read. Comparing and contrasting the Taliban and Mormonism was great but I mostly appreciated the style in which this was told. The opening scene at the diner, followed by musings of tourists potentially touching Joseph Smith's statue penis, set the bar pretty high. And this book only gets better, in fact, it's straight up "Titanic."

[Laura Yan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered Scott Carrier through NPR, and I'm so so glad I did. He is a marvel, his storytelling is mesmerizing and beautiful, and so is his writing. In one, short piece of writing, he can be hilarious and devastating. This collection of his essays take you to unexpected, often bleak, dangerous places. With Scott Carrier as your guide, you don't look away from what's hard. You are immersed and stare straight at it.

Why isn't everyone reading him??

[Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard for me to gage whether I would have loved this book so enthusiastically if I weren't married to a man who is, like the author, a non-Morman from Salt Lake City. Reading this actually made me feel like I understand my partner a little better.

Personal reasons aside, though, this book was excellent -- very insightful and well-written. My only complaint is that it was over too soon.

[Ned Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of events in the life of a journalist who grew up and lives among the Mormons of USA. He travels to problem areas of the world for his work.
The articles, though not hard hitting, are food for thought. There is probably more value for the reader on the questioning of the the reader's personal attitude of the events.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't familiar with Scott Carrier's work before this but I really enjoyed this book. He is a good storyteller and here he deftly compares his experiences with Mormons and Muslims to make some eye-opening observations.