Backgrounder: Cult behavior

Books about mass movements and those who reject them. Click on image for detailed record.

The Delusions of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups
by William J. Bernstein
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2021
Bookshop.org | Amazon | WorldCat

Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You’re Told to Do Is Wrong
by Ira Chaleff
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2015

Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance
by Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda
2nd edition, John Wiley and Sons, 2009

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
by Eric Hoffer
reprint by Harper Perennial, 2019
Bookshop.org | Amazon | WorldCat

The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris
by Mark Honigsbaum
W. W. Norton, 2019

Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism
by Robert Jay Lifton
Picador, 2000

Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry
by Robert Jay Lifton
October 2019, The New Press

Not Shooting and Not Crying: Psychological Inquiry into Moral Disobedience
by Ruth Linn
Greenwood Press, 1989

Political Ponerology: The Science of Evil, Psychopathy, and the Origins of Totalitarianism
by Andrew M. Lobaczewski
reprint edition, March 2022, Red Pill Press

The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing
by Joost A. M. Merloo
Reprint by Progressive Press, 2009

Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View
by Stanley Milgram
reprint edition, Harper Perennial, 2019

Conscientious Objection: Dissent and Democracy in a Common Law Context
by Kerry O’Halloran
March 2023, Springer

Stop Mass Hysteria: America’s Insanity from the Salem Witch Trials to the Trump Witch Hunt
by Michael Savage
Center Street, 2019

Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace
by Margaret Thaler Singer
revised edition, Jossey-Bass, 2003

Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems
by Alexandra Stein
Routledge, 2016

American Panic: A History of Who Scares Us and Why
by Mark Stein
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion
by Benjamin E. Zeller
NYU Press, 2014