I rushed out and purchased this book thinking it would be filled with facts and stories about how the church really operates. I was obviously rushing into this book with expectations set much higher than the author was able to deliver.

First, the author's style is very unusal to be politically correct about it. He is a very educated individual and I think he uses every word in his vocabulary in the book at least once and seems to have pages of text that exist only to prove that fact. In other words, this book is a perfect example of how to pad a term paper with fluff that says nothing but says it without incurring the wrath of a professor. However this approach would get you shot by an editor or someone who wants you to just cut to the chase and give you the facts. I found many sections of the book to be fodder for a good editor (I'm not an editor) and found myself wishing the author used one before publishing the book. Enough on his style of writing...

My hope in going into this book was that the author was someone who worked high up in the church for many years working as a manager or higher and had actual first hand knowledge of the information and reports he refers to in the book but alas, the author only worked for a very short period of time for the church. The story is fuzzy on just how long he was there because he jumps around when he actually gets to the storyline of his time in the church's employment. I believe he was there for perhaps a year is all. Other than his own observations which can give you insight on how the church employee has to bill his time to survive working for the church, he has very little first hand knowledge of the church to pass on himself. The author has access to individuals who he describes using pseudonames at the end of the book which is where he must have got access to the meeting notes, audit reports, etc that he refers to via footnotes in the book. I understand that he has to protect those sources but I was hoping that the author had first hand knowledge of these events himself thus this is why I was disappointed in this book outside of his style of writing.

The last few chapters of the book are the only chapters that you really need to read if you're looking for the meat of the info the author has to pass on to the reader. The last chapters deal with the Olympic bribery scandal, the City Creek Mall and has audit reports of financial misconduct by people working for the church. The other good info to pick up is the entire legal structure of the church presented in the beginning of the book and the details of the effect of correlation is through the middle of the book if you can get through those chapters. In those chapters lies nuggets of information that you have to sift through paragraphs of filler material to find such as the crying general authority in the restroom confession.

Did I feel the book was worth 25.00? Hell no. I feel ripped off at that price and would say the book was 45 hours of reading time that I had to force myself to endure just to get the few gems that were there. Had the author just given you the facts and reports, the book would have been 1/20th of its size because it's filled with more waste product than a Twinkie.

In fact, my summary of this book would be that I want to corner the author and beat the living hell out of him with his own thessarus because of the shear amount of 'fluff' in this book has that you have to wade thru to get to the few facts that here.