Amanda Montell
Cults, like porn and art, are something we feel we’ll know when we see. There is no agreed upon definition and the line of cult-land is nebulous. Montell, a linguist, suggests the core of a cult is driven by language. A vocabulary of inclusion (the way WE talk) …
My Life as a Rajneeshee, and the long journey back to freedom
Jane Stork
Netflix made a huge splash with their multi-part documentary, Wild Wild Country, about the Bhagwan cult. While a lot of the focus was on Bhagwan and his loyal secretary Sheela, another member Jane Stork (formerly known …
Dr. Tara Westover
Westover’s memoir of life in an isolated, paranoid Mormon household is gripping, grim and terribly sad. Her bipolar father believes the End Times are near and they spend countless hours prepping. He also distrusts the government, the schools, doctors, safety gear and seat belts. His family pays …
Jeff Guin
There are some tragedies that are so mind-boggling and so bizarre that we can’t help going back to take yet another look. “Why would anyone choose to follow such an obvious, slimy charlatan like Jim Jones?” we wonder. But the story of Jones …
Don Lattin
Touching on its early history, leaders of the movement and testimony of ex- and current members, Lattin presents a creepy portrait of the Children of God cult, otherwise known as The Family. The book loosely follows the life of David Berg, the charismatic and manipulative leader, and his …
Hank Stuever
Hank Stuever ventures into the heart of…lightness? Researching his book on Christmas he spends three holiday seasons in Frisco Texas, the home of glitter, country, Jay-szus, more glitter, mega-churches and mega-malls. Stuever follows Tammie, a professional Christmas decorator, trolls the malls daily, befriends a single mom and her …
William Lobdell
Lobdell’s journey from non-belief, to fervent Christianity and back again is a surprisingly rational one. With his life falling apart on all fronts, a young Lobdell’s friend and mentor suggests he give Christianity a try. Following a conversion at a retreat, Lobdell reorders his life and soon finds …
Bruce Grierson
The epically long title of this books reflects the equally massive amount of information in this book. A hair under 300 pages it manages to pack in a dense, and truly fascinating, amount of information. A u-turner is someone who makes a radical change in their life – …
A.J. Jacobs
From the author of The Know-it-All comes another awesome title. At loose ends after his year reading the encyclopedia, Jacobs decides to embark on another experiment. As a agnostic Jew he always had some interest in religion and the perplexed fascination with belief that many non-believers have.
Jacobs …
Carolyn Jessop
This true and grimly gripping biography pulls you in and grabs your imagination. To the average, educated midwesterner this story of polygamy, abuse and life in a totally insular religious community sounds like soap opera madness. But Jessop both lived it and survived it. As her community slid …
My Life in Orange (Tim Guest) and Bhagwan, the God that Failed (Hugh Milne)
Both of these fascinating autobiographies tell of the authors’ lives living in ashrams of the Guru Shree Bhagwan. Guest moved into his first communal ashram at about age 5 when, after short bouts with other major …
Stephen Bloom
People are weird. Society just amplifies our weirdness. Take us out of our normal microcosm and dump us elsewhere, and we can be aliens to our own race of humankind. Postville is, or was, a sleepy little farming town in Iowa. A dinky, inbred but friendly burg, much …
Robert Bennett, Jules Shell and Nick Kroll with a foreword by The Village People
You don’t need to be a Jew to appreciate this glorious collection. Bennett et al. collected thousands of Bar and Bat Mitzvah photos from the 60’s through the 80’s. And lord are they hideous. Acres of …
Hella Winston
I LOVE books on insular, orthodox religious groups. No idea why. They just fascinate me – Amish, Hutterite, Hasidim, Mormons. Why? Perhaps, as Winston points out in her introduction, we are both fascinated and revolted by the idea of living in such a close-knit, rule-ridden community because of …
Martha Beck
I’m not sure really what to classify this book as. After deciding to have a Downs Syndrome baby, Beck describes her decision to leave grad school and Harvard to return to her hometown of Provo Utah and her Mormon family. Through a winding path she describes the friendliness …
Jon Krakauer
Krakauer has fast become one of my favorite non-fiction/journalistic writers. A writer for various travel magazines, Krakauer has turned a number of his articles into full size books. Under the Banner of Heaven follows the trial of Ron and Don Lafferty, two Mormon brothers who believed God had …
