Books like The Culting of America — picked by fans

Blair Glaser's story resonated deeply with me.

We were both seeking deeper meaning in life, longing for personal and spiritual growth, and looking for a spiritual awakening. We found ourselves at the feet of a female guru, somewhat unique in the cult world.

Blair’s story explores the seduction and allure of the spiritual journey and exposes the pitfalls and manipulation that can occur in spiritual cult groups. 

I was fascinated by Ruwan Meepagala’s story of the One Taste group. It was the complete antithesis of my spiritual journey.

While Ruwan was exploring his sexuality and learning about the female orgasm through public masturbation and meditation, I was in a celibate group that was sexually repressed.

We both worked for the groups we were involved in; he was fired, and I chose to exit. Both were challenging, life-changing events. Like Ruwan, we were engaged in highly controlled groups, aka a cult, and found a way out.

Carly’s memoir is one of searching, seeking, and healing.

Her journey leads her to the jungles of Panama, where she becomes entangled with a charismatic leader. For those of us who have found our lives intertwined with a magnetic leader, it often takes time to understand the tactics of control and manipulation we experience.

Carly’s book explores the need to find ourselves in the darkest of times and reclaim our lives and our voice. Her story deeply resonated with both of us, as we longed to belong.

There is much that resonated with me about this book, which is part memoir and part cult guidebook.

Sarah Edmonson and Anthony “Nippy” Ames, both ex-cult members of NXVIM, share their personal experiences and highlight stories of several people who were also involved in cults.

They expose the fascinating similarities in the different types of cults and offer tips to see through the many ways people are manipulated into participating in a cult-like group.

David Berg was a sexual offender who preyed on children. One of these children is responsible for writing the book Born Into the Children of God. The story of Natacha is riveting and physically painful, and it aptly illustrates the resiliency that children must possess in order to triumph over a number of traumatic experiences. This book raises awareness about the harms that are done to children who are raised in religious communities that are insular and fundamentalist.

Because I am familiar with the challenges of putting one's thoughts on paper about traumatic experiences from their youth, this book had a profound effect on me. This book is one that I would recommend to others due to the multifaceted insight it provides into the process by which child molesters in cults groom adults to the point of convincing them to take part in the abuse of their own children.

I had the privilege of spending some time with Dr. Lalich, and during that time I found her to be witty, funny, and extremely interested in the experiences of children who were raised in cults. As someone who grew up in a cult, I am grateful that she spent the time to concentrate on the children, as they are the ones who almost always fare the worst. This book chronicles the lives of several people who were raised under the sway of repressive religions. I am honored to be one of those people.

Dr. Lalich conducted the first in-depth study of its kind, conducting interviews with sixty-five individuals who were either born into or raised in thirty-nine distinct cultic groups spread across more than a dozen countries. Many of these individuals eventually made the decision to leave the cultic lifestyle on their own, which is something that is very unique… show more.

I was privileged to be asked to mentor Lilia as she wrote of her life in and escape from the Gloriavale religious cult, a community of about 500 people living a secluded and strictly controlled life in a remote part of the South Island of New Zealand. Her life was like my fictional book, but on steroids. Four years after leaving the pain of knowing she’d never again see those she loved was still so acute that she wept as she wrote of it. Life inside Gloriavale fascinated and horrified me. But while Lilia gained the freedom to forge her own life she lost the closeness and love of wider family and friends. A heart-wrenching but ultimately triumphant story.

I absolutely love Sharon Shinn’s writing, both her luscious, sophisticated prose and the way she writes relationships between characters. She hits the perfect balance between well-planned, interesting plots, rich fantasy worlds, and the exact right amount of romantic subplot and character development.

This book—which follows a group of magic-wielding mystics and the reluctant, militaristic King’s Riders assigned to protect them as they travel the land, investigating a rise in anti-magic sentiment—is my favorite of her books, not least because it has some of the coziest found family dynamics and campfire friendships to be found outside of classics like The Lord of the Rings!

It was a brilliant decision on Natalie's part to create a graphic novel that lays out the many facets and layers that make up the dynamics of cults. It has been a pleasure for me to get to know Natalie. A former member of the Jehovah's Witnesses, she is now a dynamic and independent individual. This graphic novel explores a wide variety of aspects of the tactics used by Jehovah's Witnesses, including shunning, the reasons why cult family members will disavow non-cult family members, and a great deal more. This seemed to me to be an excellent option for storytelling geared for minds that have a tendency to gravitate toward visuals.

A science fiction novel that has as much focus on fleshed-out character development as the science? Amazing. The plot of this fascinating novel, even more so. Imagine a world where all the stars you see in the night sky suddenly go out. How would you react when you learned the reason for this was a world-spanning barrier which is not only blocking out the starry night but is also vastly increasing the rate at which time passes beyond the barrier—to the point where the sun ages billions of years in a matter of decades.

From exploring the implications of this time-bending device to witnessing the world as it copes with this new reality, this is one story that—after reading it decades ago—still holds a fond place in my heart.