Inside the World of Warren Jeffs – The Power of Polygamy
Inside the World of Warren Jeffs The Power of Polygamy
Inside the World of Warren Jeffs looks deep into the world of the Polygamist lifestyle exposing the dark side as never before. You are skillfully taken by the author through the everyday existence of the pluralistic family to endure the pain, suffering, cruelty and regimentation of singular male domination. A much overlooked fact about polygamy is that it can only work when there are more women than men in a society. Eventually, polygamy burns itself out because of natural selection. When the number of men equals or almost equals the number of women, there are no spare women to marry, and polygamy ceases. Only in the Fundamentalist Polygamist Groups do they keep the practice of polygamy alive, by abandoning a large number of their sons. These teenage boys are cast out into society to fend for themselves with little more than a sixth grade education, nowhere to go, no friends, and knowing they can never contact their mothers or family members again.
A father throwing away his sons effectively throws away his competition for young females to take as wives. Because women are considered prime property in the Fundamentalist Polygamist religions, and as the pool of eligible women shrinks, polygamist men look for younger and younger wives to fulfill their needs. Some men marry girls who are little more than children, or at least make contracts with a young girl s father for marriage at a later date. The usual age of marriage for polygamist girls, is between twelve and fourteen. By the time a girl is twelve or even younger in a polygamist culture, older males have already noticed her and are vying and negotiating for her hand in marriage with whichever prophet leads their church.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Couldn't put it down !!
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 some of them. Some of these same women contined to find yet another Polygamy family even after leaving a horrible one.
I feel mostly sorry for the children 
Great book otherwise !!
1 Star Don't waste your money!
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!
5 Stars Praying for An Understanding of Other Worlds? Read this Book
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.
3 Stars Warren Jeffs
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.
1 Star Oh Please
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." [...].
Related posts:
- When Men Become Gods – Mormon Polygamist Warren Jeffs His Cult of Fear and the Women Who Fought Back
- Stolen Innocence – My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect Becoming a Teenage Bride and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs
- It's Been A Year Since the FLDS Raid – A Look Inside "the Temple"
- Polygamy News: Schlafly Claims Obama Supports Polygamy; Texas FLDS Case Moving Forward
- Inside the FLDS
- Banking on Heaven – Polygamy in the Heartland of the American West, DVD
- Banking on Heaven – Polygamy in the Heartland of the American West DVD
- Illegitimate – How a Loving God Rescued a Son of Polygamy
- Daughter of the Saints – Growing Up In Polygamy
- Gods Brothel – The Extortion of Sex for Salvation in Contemporary Mormon and Christian Fundamentalist Polygamy and the Stories of 18 Women Who Escaped
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