Religious Cults

A moving, heartbreaking, and lyrical true story of the author’s escape from an apocalyptic cult—and the survival skills that led to her freedom. My family prepared me for the end of the world, but I know how to survive on what the earth yields. As a child, Michelle Dowd grew up on a mountain...

Now a Netflix original series! Unorthodox is the bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman’s escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, featuring a new epilogue by the author. As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect...

An in-depth look into the creation of the post-WWII Healing Revival focusing on the historical perspective of William Marrion Branham, who has been credited by some as the evangelist who both initiated and led the movement. From his involvement with the Kardashian family in California to his politically-charged sermons supporting the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, William Branham lived a fascinating and unbelievable history connected to the collaboration, influence, and power of recognized public figures and events in American history.

When Brandon Blackmore left the FLDS Church in 2012, he had to endure seeing his children taken from him by the cult—and fought tooth and nail to keep the FLDS from trafficking his children. This is that story.

Shunned follows Linda as she steps into a world she was taught to fear and discovers what is possible when we stay true to our hearts, even when it means disappointing those we love.

Tom Cruise and John Travolta say the Church of Scientology is a force for good. Others disagree. Award-winning journalist John Sweeney investigated the Church for more than half a decade. During that time he was intimidated, spied on, and followed, and the results were spectacular: Sweeney lost his temper with the Church's spokesman on camera, and his infamous 'exploding tomato' clip was seen by millions around the world.

"Time is that in which we live - it is horizontal. It is from A to B to C to D; it is in a line. Eternity is vertical. It is not from A to B and from B to C. It is from A to more A to still more A. It goes on upwards. The moment is rare because it happens only when meditation has reached ripening, maturity, when you have touched your innermost core." The vertical line opens a door to eternity.

In 1993, David Koresh and a band of heavily armed evangelical Christians took on the might of the US government. A two-month siege of their compound in Waco, Texas, ended in a firefight that killed seventy-six, including twenty-five children. America is still picking up the pieces, and we still haven't heard the full story.

Osho responds here to a question relating to meditation, a space of "no-mind": "...meditation covers a very long pilgrimage. When I say 'meditation is witnessing', it is the beginning of meditation. And when I say 'meditation is no-mind', it is the completion of the pilgrimage. Witnessing is the beginning, and no-mind is the fulfillment. Witnessing is the method to reach the no-mind. Naturally you will feel witnessing is easier. It is close to you. But witnessing is only like seeds, and then is the long waiting period."

In 1632, an entire convent in the small French village of Loudun was apparently possessed by the devil. After a sensational and celebrated trial, the convent's charismatic priest Urban Grandier - accused of spiritually and sexually seducing the nuns in his charge - was convicted of being in league with Satan. Then he was burned at the stake for witchcraft. A remarkable true story of religious and sexual obsession, The Devils of Loudun is considered by many to be Brave New World author Aldous Huxley's nonfiction masterpiece.

This book will help distinguish between Scientology, the Illuminati, modern-day cults, and true Christianity!

Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship, has been hailed by many as a “modern classic” among both secular and Christian thinkers alike. This work is a trenchant analysis of modern psychology—an enterprise that Paul Vitz maintains has become a religion, a secular cult of self, now part of the problem of modern life rather than part of its resolution.

“Impressively researched and written with storytelling verve” (The Wall Street Journal), this is the definitive account of the disastrous siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, featuring never-before-seen documents, photographs, and interviews, from former investigative...

Grounded in investigative research and real survivor stories, Surviving Modern Yoga uncovers the physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by Ashtanga yoga leader Pattabhi Jois—and reckons with the culture, structures, and mythos that enabled it. Yoga culture sells well-meaning westerners the full...

This is the story of a Canadian woman who was in the Advanced Training Institute, run by Bill Gothard, for fourteen years. The amazing thing is that she never knew she was in a cult until several years after she was out. That's what happened to Christine in 2014. She has spent the past nine years trying to deprogram and change the way she sees the world. Join her as she navigates the cult, goes through a divorce, finds out she was in a cult and subsequently has to unlearn all she believed to be true.

Something terrible has happened in the snowbound village of Kingdom Come, Wyoming, where 12 eerily identical houses stand dark and abandoned. Meals remain untouched on dining room tables, cars are still in garages, and the town's residents have vanished into thin air. This is the disturbing setting where vacationing medical examiner Maura Isles and her traveling companions find themselves trapped during a ferocious snowstorm.

Stephen Mansfield, the acclaimed New York Times best-selling author, has highlighted the growing popularity of Mormonism—a belief system with cultic roots—and the implications of its critical rise. Mormons are moving into the spotlight in pop culture, politics, sports, and entertainment via presidential candidates like Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, media personality Glenn Beck, mega-bestselling Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, and The Book of Mormon, the hottest show on Broadway.

Leftist firebrand Fredrik deBoer exposes the lie at the heart of our educational system and demands top-to-bottom reform. Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent...

Understanding Cult Psychology: 10 Ways Leaders Manipulate Followers is a deep and unflinching exploration of how ordinary people are drawn into extraordinary control. Far from the caricatured images of robed figures and remote compounds, cultic influence often begins in far more subtle, disarming ways—a warm smile, an inspiring message, a sense of belonging. But behind the welcome lies a calculated process of psychological manipulation, refined over decades, designed to reshape a person’s identity, loyalty, and perception of reality.

In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill became available and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, opened its doors in New York City. Its founders wanted to start a revolution, one grounded in ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from societal norms, and the revolution needed to begin at home.