"Everyone wants to believe in something or someone: a higher ideal, a god on earth, a voice from heaven.... When this appetite for belief combines with the need to belong, great things can happen.... But what about those rare moments when the dark side of human nature takes hold?" The shocking Cults, based on the Parcast podcast of the same name, surveys some of the most famous and disturbing examples of small, extremist, ill-fated sects. Parcast founder Max Cutler is joined by Kevin Conley (Stud; The Full Burn) in writing this roundup of frighteningly charismatic leaders and their followers.
Ten chapters cover 10 cults chosen for their impacts on the world's imagination, beginning (naturally) with Charles Manson and his "family." Cutler's focus is both narrative, detailing the story of the leader's upbringing and the cult's rise and fall, and also probing: Cults is interested in motivations and, to the extent possible, diagnoses. "With so many cult leaders who died suddenly or violently, any diagnosis of psychological disturbance is purely speculative," but the temptation is strong. "Cult leaders make such good case studies: because the gruesome facts of their biographies are both widely known and easy to connect to a psychological disorder." Cults are labeled in the table of contents by the root cause Cutler has identified for each leader's actions. According to this system, Manson was motivated by shame, as was Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo, whose Narcosatanists were responsible for at least 16 deaths in Mexico in the 1980s.
Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple was driven by exploitation, taking advantage of his followers financially and sexually until the deaths of 908 Americans (including Jones) in what was called "Jonestown" in Guyana. Likewise exploitative was the bizarre Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose ashrams in India and then Oregon supported his desire for both nitrous oxide and Rolls Royces (he owned 93 at one point), and who laced Oregonian salad bars with salmonella in a bid for local political control. Pathological lying, megalomania, sadism, escape and denial of reality cover the remaining cults: Claude Vorilhon's Raëlism, Roch Thériault's Ant Hill Kids, David Koresh's Branch Davidians, Keith Raniere's NXIVM, Credonia Mwerinde's Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, and Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate. Manipulative, self-aggrandizing, compelling and lacking in empathy, these characters (in every sense) are by turns laughable, inexplicably strange and chillingly, brutally cruel. Not for the faint of heart but absolutely for the true-crime junkie, Cults is packed with details and unafraid to posit theories to explain these superlatively weird and scary stories. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia
Shelf Talker: This shocking study by the creator of the podcast Cults recounts and dissects the leaders, followers and histories of 10 extreme cults.