The Church of Scientology maintains a wide variety of beliefs and practices. The core belief holds that a human is an immortal, spiritual being (thetan) that is resident in a physical body. The thetan has had innumerable past lives, some of which, preceding the thetan's arrival on Earth, were lived in extraterrestrial cultures. Based on case studies at advanced levels, it is predicted that any Scientologist undergoing auditing will eventually come across and recount a common series of past-life events.
Cult is a term, in most contexts pejorative, for a relatively small group which is typically led by a charismatic and self-appointed leader, who tightly controls its members, requiring unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant. This term is also used for a new religious movement or other social group which is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular person, object, or goal. This sense of the term is weakly defined – having divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia – and has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study.
A doomsday cult is a cult that believes in apocalypticism and millenarianism, including both those that predict disaster and those that attempt to destroy the entire universe. Sociologist John Lofland coined the term doomsday cult in his 1966 study of a group of members of the Unification Church of the United States: Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith. In 1958, Leon Festinger published a study of a group with cataclysmic predictions: When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World.
Booklist is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. Booklist's primary audience consists of libraries, educators, and booksellers. The magazine is available to subscribers in print and online. It is published 22 times per year, and reviews over 7,500 titles annually. The Booklist brand also offers a blog, various newsletters, and monthly webinars. The Booklist offices are located in the American Library Association headquarters in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood.
Outrageous Betrayal: The Dark Journey of Werner Erhard from est to Exile is a non-fiction book written by freelance journalist Steven Pressman and first published in 1993 by St. Martin's Press. The book gives an account of Werner Erhard's early life as Jack Rosenberg, his exploration of various forms of self-help techniques, and his foundation of Erhard Seminars Training "est" and later of Werner Erhard and Associates and of the est successor course, "The Forum". Pressman details the rapid financial success Erhard had with these companies, as well as controversies relating to litigation involving former participants in his courses. The work concludes by going over the impact of a March 3, 1991 60 Minutes broadcast on CBS where members of Erhard's family made allegations against him, and Erhard's decision to leave the United States.
Captive Hearts, Captive Minds: Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Other Abusive Relationships is a study of cults and abusive relationships by Madeleine Landau Tobias, Janja Lalich, Ph.D., and Michael Langone. It was published by Hunter House Publishers in 1994. In 2006, the book was reissued as Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships.
Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults is a 2004 psychology and sociology book on cults by Janja Lalich. It was published by University of California Press.
Jan Groenveld was a member of the Latter-day Saints Church and the Jehovah's Witnesses. She spent fifteen years in these and other organisations before leaving them in 1975 and resolving to make more information about what she saw as "cults" available to the general public.
On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left is a non-fiction book about political cults, written by Dennis Tourish and Tim Wohlforth.
Kathryn Casey is an American writer of mystery novels and non-fiction books. She is best known for writing She Wanted It All, which recounts the case of Celeste Beard, who married an Austin multimillionaire only to convince her lesbian lover, Tracey Tarlton, to kill him.
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference is the debut book by Malcolm Gladwell, first published by Little, Brown in 2000. Gladwell defines a tipping point as "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." The book seeks to explain and describe the "mysterious" sociological changes that mark everyday life. As Gladwell states: "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do." The examples of such changes in his book include the rise in popularity and sales of Hush Puppies shoes in the mid-1990s and the steep drop in New York City's crime rate after 1990.
A Place of Safety is a crime novel written by English writer Caroline Graham and first published by Headline in 1999. The story follows Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby investigating the murder of a man in a village. It is the sixth volume in Graham's Chief Inspector Barnaby series, preceded by Faithful unto Death and followed by A Ghost in the Machine.
Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids is a non-fiction book by Maia Szalavitz analyzing the controversy surrounding the troubled teen industry. The book was published February 16, 2006, by Riverhead Books. Szalavitz focuses on four programs: Straight, Incorporated, a copy of the Straight Inc. program called KIDS, North Star wilderness boot camp, and the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools. She discusses the background, history and methodology of the troubled-teen industry, including techniques drawn from attack therapy and Synanon. She uses first-person accounts and court testimony in her research, and states that no evidence exists proving that these programs are effective. The book also includes advice for parents and an appendix with additional resources on how to get responsible help for teenagers.
Generation Loss is a 2007 novel by American writer Elizabeth Hand.
Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet is a 2000 book by Jessica Litman detailing the legislative struggles over the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It was widely reviewed and is generally cited as the definitive history of the DMCA's passage, as well as an exemplar of the lobbying and jockeying around passage of contemporary copyright legislation. Karen Coyle noted that
this is not a law book, although it is about law. Digital Copyright is instead a social history of copyright law. It is not about the law per se but about how the technology developments of the 20th century changed how copyright law is crafted in the United States and who reaps the benefits.
The Winner's trilogy is a trilogy of young adult fantasy novels by Marie Rutkoski, which includes The Winner's Curse (2014), The Winner's Crime (2015), and The Winner's Kiss (2016), as well as the short story prequel, Bridge of Snow (2014).
The Fellowship of Friends, also known as Living Presence and the Fourth Way School, is a new religious organization which is non-denominational that has been labelled as a cult by critics, ex-members and some academics.
Sadie is a novel written by Courtney Summers. The book was released on September 4, 2018, and is told from two perspectives: some chapters offering Sadie's point of view and some chapters being styled as transcripts from a podcast called "The Girls" hosted by a man named West McCray. The release of the book was accompanied by the release of a mock true-crime podcast titled The Girls: Find Sadie which is available on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.
A Place Called Waco: A Survivor's Story is the memoir of Waco siege survivor David Thibodeau. He co-authored it with novelist Leon Whiteson (1930–2013). It was originally published in 1999 by PublicAffairs, and it was re-released by Hachette Books in 2018 with the title Waco: A Survivor's Story as a revised and updated version. It corresponded with the release of Waco, a 2018 miniseries partially inspired by Thibodeau's account. Aviva Layton co-authored the re-release with Thibodeau and Whiteson. Robert Fass narrated the audiobook version of Waco: A Survivor's Story. According to Publishers Weekly, the book was originally rejected by over 20 publishing houses before reaching PublicAffairs.
Why Waco?: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America is a 1995 non-fiction book written by James D. Tabor and Eugene V. Gallagher on the Waco siege and the anti-cult movement in America. It was published by the University of California Press. The same press reprinted it in 1997 in paperback. The appendix of the book contains an unfinished manuscript written by David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians, on the Seven seals in the Book of Revelation. The appendix has a preface written by Tabor and J. Phillip Arnold. The manuscript was obtained from a survivor of the fire, Ruth Riddle. The final pages of the book provide a list of Branch Davidians who died in the 28 February 1993 raid, the 19 April 1993 fire, and who survived.
