Books like Terror, Love and Brainwashing — picked by fans

This is an outstanding book on healing from trauma, and I've read literally hundreds. This book transformed the way I practice psychotherapy; it transformed the way I understand what trauma does to the mind and body, and it transformed my relationship with myself. Fisher gets right to the heart of what brings most people into psychotherapy: self-alienation. Lots of people say, "I'm beating myself up," casually, without realizing the price they are paying for how habitually critical, punitive, discouraging, and condemning they are toward themselves!

Most people have compassion for others, but can't imagine how they could use that compassion internally. Internal compassion is what heals trauma, and this book, like no other I know, lays out, with depth and complexity, how to get there. 

This is a follow-up to Snyder's book On Tyranny, which I read when a friend gave me the graphic novel version. That one was great, this one really blew me away. My 1-year-old mother and her family escaped from Ukraine in 1919 after a pogrom in their village killed 1600 other Jews.

In America, my grandparents, free from persecution, worked hard, and the country that took them in gave my mother and her brothers opportunities that, in turn, gave me and my children more and more opportunities. Snyder, a Yale historian, knows Eastern European history inside out. He's a close observer of how tyranny is brought down and how freedom is constructed. Freedom has never been more fragile in the U.S. and around the world as authoritarianism and autocracies rise. I wish Snyder's book could be taught to every child and every adult in America today. 

You don't have to be a cult survivor to have been abused by a traumatizing narcissist, but if you are a survivor, this book is essential and indispensable. I've recommended it countless times, not just to cult survivors for whom it is written, but to others who have broken free from abusive relationships.

When I left a cult in 1994, my shame and my feeling of isolation felt like a prison. This book put me on the road to freedom. It has everything you need to know about what to expect and how to navigate re-entry into your own life, a life that can be free from undue influence and control. 

A fictionalized version of the author's harrowing autobiography, this series of short, consecutive novels is a compelling and intensely moving story of trauma and recovery. We are shown how childhood sexual abuse and emotional neglect is a murder of the child's soul, how it can lead to addiction and self-loathing, and how recovery becomes a matter of choosing life over death.

The author gives us relentless honesty, focused prose, acute insight, and sharp, wickedly incisive wit. Slowly, steadily, Melrose heals and grows, understanding more and feeling more. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. In some of the most beautiful writing I've ever read, St. Aubyn describes the essence of healing from trauma: the experience of deeply felt, overwhelming compassion and empathy.

Čapek was a kind of Czech Orwell. Best known for his satirical science fiction — RUR gave us the word “robot”; War with the Newts is mindbogglingly inventive — he was also a prolific journalist who decried the rise of totalitarianism while celebrating ordinary lives. This anthology is the perfect introduction to his abundant wit, insight and compassion, with subjects ranging from the dishonesty of political language to the joy of gardening. A courageous anti-fascist, Čapek died of pneumonia in 1939, shortly before the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia and arrived at his door to arrest him.

The classic exposition of the idea that central governmental economic planning will inevitably be wasteful and tyrannical. Hayek today is caricatured by both right and left, but he is not the minimal state absolutist that both sides often take him to be. Hayek thinks that the way to attack poverty is not redistribution – there isn’t yet enough wealth in existence to give everyone a decent life – but the opportunities created by free markets. Another impetus for my own work was reading this book and discovering that I agreed with him much more than I had expected to. 

Oh, man… I love this book so much! Donnelly writes the kind of prose that makes me jealous. I frequently stop and go back, rereading her words just to savor the imagery and effortless flow. Characterizations are rich and full, not only for the leads but also for the background characters. Now, I need to point out that there is no magic in this book, so if you’re looking for dragons and lightning bolts, it won’t scratch that itch. But Amberlough feels like a proper fantasy world, and that earns it a place on this list. if you enjoy the encroaching global conflict of Lord of the Rings, but also love John LeCarre and Cabaret, Amberlough is the perfectly-blended cocktail you’ve been looking for.

Juan Linz (1926-2013) was one of the most insightful political analysts of the past hundred years. He was especially noted for his studies of how democracies can degenerate into authoritarianism and on the characteristics and types of authoritarian and totalitarian rule. The greater part of this work first appeared in 1975 (in a multi-volume Handbook of Political Science), but with its publication as a separate book a quarter of a century later, Linz added almost fifty pages of valuable ‘Further Reflections’. Authoritarian systems embrace a wide variety of non-democratic polities, among them absolute monarchy, military dictatorship, ‘sultanistic’ regimes, and theocracies. Totalitarianism is a still more extreme case of concentration of power, ‘a regime form’, as Linz puts it, ‘for completely organizing political life and society’. It is underpinned by an all-encompassing ideology justifying total control today with the promise of utopia tomorrow (though tomorrow never comes). Linz’s erudite analysis is… show more.

This book tells a strong story about censorship and has perhaps a "light" dystopian feel.

I liked this book because Bradbury’s characters are well drawn and, like Orwell, he creates a strong story. It reminded me of past events in the 30’s. A fireman, following orders to confiscate and destroy books because the authority does not want people to develop constructive thinking. Gradually turning against his boss, the fireman kills his boss and joins a group of people who memorise books and store content for the future.

I found this a thought-provoking story and hope that, considering the censorship laws we have today at home and in countries like Russia and Iran, this is one story that does not come true.

Adam Johnson visited North Korea once as a tourist. Based on his keen observations during those weeks, he spins a fantastic tale about Pak Jun Do, an orphaned boy who uses treachery and deception to rise to a high position in the North Korean regime. Pak is part of a crew that kidnaps a little girl from Japan, and later marries North Korea’s most famous actress. The genius of the book is that Johnson imbues the characters with believable personalities, even as he moves them through a nightmarish reality most would find completely unbelievable. The book is so good that one need not have any interest in, or knowledge of, North Korea to enjoy it.