Download or read book From Cult to Country written by Michael Ricks and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2018-11-29 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cult-to-country is about country musician, Michael Ricks, growing up in a household where his parents were rabidly devoted to a religious cult that, among other things, preached against the use of modern medicine to the detriment of over 100 church member deaths in under twenty years. The eldest of nine children, Michael suffered the brunt of emotional, psychological and physical abuse meted out by his ardent father who worked thoroughly to instill suffering as a normal way of life. Michael describes how music helped him cope through the abuse and well into his adult years.Musically gifted by the age of 12, Michael took a paddle his father used to hit the children and turned it into a makeshift guitar. Thus began Michael's lifelong love affair with the banjo and guitar and country music. After years of attacks of stress-induced asthma, Michael began a personal journey to ferret out the roots of his anxiety: a journey which has taken him into the world of country music. Michael's story is a story of ongoing anxiety-remission through his love of country music and his knack for taking instruments of pain into instruments of redemption.

Download or read book The Cult of the Nation in France written by David Avrom. BELL and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a work of lucid prose and striking originality, Bell offers the first comprehensive survey of patriotism and national sentiment in early modern France, and shows how the dialectical relationship between nationalism and religion left a complex legacy that still resonates in debates over French national identity today. Table of Contents: Preface Introduction: Constructing the Nation 1. The National and the Sacred 2. The Politics of Patriotism and National Sentiment 3. English Barbarians, French Martyrs 4. National Memory and the Canon of Great Frenchmen 5. National Character and the Republican Imagination 6. National Language and the Revolutionary Crucible Conclusion: Toward the Present Day and the End of Nationalism Notes Note on Internet Appendices and Bibliography Index Reviews of this book: Bell delineates the history of nationalism in France, tracing its origins to the 17th century. He shows how in 18th-century France, political and intellectual leaders made perfect national unity a priority, allowing the construction of the nation to take precedence over other political tasks. The goal was to provide all French people with the same language, laws, customs, and values. Bell argues that while the French leaders hoped that patriotism and national sentiment would replace religion as the binding force, it was actually religion that was a major (but not exclusive) factor in helping the French see the world around them. This period of history was the beginning of the first large-scale nationalist program. Bell also shows how the relationship between nationalism and religion contributes to the French national identity debate today. Bell's comprehensive and well-documented book is written in an accessible style...Recommended for French and European history collections. --Mary Salony, Library Journal Reviews of this book: At the center of Bell's subtle and intricate argument is religion. Religion, he suggests, was changing in the 18th century. And with men less likely to see God as an interventionist presence in their daily lives and more likely to stress God's distant, inscrutable quality, space was opened up for an autonomous realm of human action, described by a series of interconnected words: society, public opinion, civilization, fatherland and nation. --Richard Vinen, New York Times Book Review Reviews of this book: David Bell has interesting things to say about the French kindred and about an important aspect of their life together. The Cult of the Nation in France is about the way a particular kind of togetherness and a novel kind of identity were implanted, grew (and may have begun to wither) in France's fertile soil. The nation, he argues, is no spontaneous growth but a political artifact: not organic like a tree but constructed like a city. --Eugen Weber, Los Angeles Times Reviews of this book: Bell argues in his excellent analysis of the 18th-century conceptual birth of French nationalism that nationalism emerged at a point when French intellectuals increasingly came to see God as distant from human affairs and sough to separate religious passions from political life...A masterful, thought-provoking [study]. --P. G. Wallace, Choice Reviews of this book: This excellent book is at once a valuable account of the development of the concept of the nation in France and an important example of the use that can be made of the culture of print...Bell argues that right-wing nationalism has belonged consistently to a minority and that there has been a basic continuity in French republican nationalism over the past two centuries, views that not all will share, but arguments that testify to the importance of this well-crafted work. --Jeremy Black, History A notable addition to the expanding literature on nationalism in general and of French nationalism in particular, The Cult of the Nation in France explores how national affiliation became part of individual identity. It demonstrates the connections between nationalism and religion, without falling into the simple trap of treating nationalism as another religion. Against the present-day challenges faced by French republican nationalism, Bell insightfully examines the paradoxical process whereby the French came to posit themselves as a union of politically and spiritually like-minded citizens. --Joan B. Landes, Pennsylvania State University A formidably intelligent and beautifully written analysis of how the French came to perceive their nation as a political construction. Its breadth, together with its highly original discussion of the role of religion, makes The Cult of the Nation in France essential reading both for students of nationalism and for anyone wanting to understand current French debates on culture, ethnicity, and identity. --Linda Colley, London School of Economics and Political Science David Bell is one of the most talented young historians working in any field. This fascinating, brilliantly argued, and beautifully written study demonstrates the multi-stranded origins of the concept of the nation in France. Bell's major contribution is to place the timing of this crucial evolution well before the Revolution of 1789. He never loses sight of the linguistic and cultural complexity of France, bringing to a conclusion the story of French nationalism in our era. --John Merriman, Yale University

Download or read book Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation states and Beyond written by Kirill Postoutenko and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-14 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inhaltsverzeichnis: Symbolic patterns and interactional dynamics in ruler personality cults : state of the art and open questions / Kirill Postoutenko and Darin Stephanov -- "Personality cults" : the career of the contested notion / Dmitri Zakharine -- The mechanisms of cult production : an overview / Xavier Marquez -- Making the cult of personality from bottom up : the case of seventeenth-century Mughal India / Ali Anooshahr -- A personality cult against one's will? Traits and trajectories of popular veneration of Emperor Alexander I (r. 1801-1825) / Darin Stepanov -- Of death and dominion : Queen Victoria and the cult of colonial loyalty / John Plunkett -- The magic mirror : supplicant letters and the role of false equivalences in shaping ruler dominance / Eva Giloi -- Father of the people, face of the nation : continuities and splits in premodern foundations of modern ruler personality cults / Alexey Tikhomirov -- The image of Josip Broz Tito in post-Yugoslavia : between national and local memory / Tamara Trošt -- Deification, canonization and random signaling : upholding and sustaining personality cults / Kirill Postoutenko -- 'We thank you, our beloved leader!' the origins and evolution of Nicolae Ceaușescu's cult of personality / Manuela Marin -- Embodied practices of leadership : the case of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan / Charlotte Joppien -- Symbolic patterns and interactional dynamics in ruler personality cults : responding to questions and formulating ideas for future research / Kirill Postoutenko and Darin Stephanov.

Download or read book Rajneeshpuram written by Russell King and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Russell King has written the most definitive account of this grand American saga. Rajneeshpuram is rich storytelling." —Chapman and Maclain Way, directors of Wild Wild Country In 1981, ambitious young Ma Anand Sheela transported the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to the United States to fulfill his dream of creating a utopia for his thousands of disciples. Four years later, the incendiary Rajneeshpuram commune in Oregon collapsed under the weight of audacious criminal conspiracies hatched in its inner sanctum, including the largest bioterrorism attack in US history, an unprecedented election fraud scheme, and multiple attempted murders. Rajneeshpuram explores how this extraordinary spiritual community, featured in the Netflix docuseries Wild Wild Country, went so wrong. Drawing from extensive interviews with former disciples and an exhaustive review of commune records, government and police files, and archival materials, author Russell King probes the charismatic power that Bhagwan (later known as Osho) and Sheela exercised over the community and the turbulent legal and political environment that left commune leaders ready to deceive, poison, and even murder to preserve their home and their master. Rajneeshpuram is a fresh examination of the Rajneesh story, using newly available information and interviews with high-ranking disciples who have never before shared their stories.

Download or read book God s Own Country written by Ross Raisin and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009-02-05 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Granta Best Young British Novelist and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, Shortlisted for NINE literary awards 'Ross Raisin's story of how a disturbed but basically well-intentioned rural youngster turns into a malevolent sociopath is both chilling in its effect and convincing in its execution' J. M. Coetzee 'Utterly frightening and electrifying' Joshua Ferris 'Astonishing, funny, unsettling ... An unforgettable creation [whose] literary forebears include Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield and Alex from A Clockwork Orange' The Times 'Remarkable, compelling, very funny and very disturbing . . . like no other character in contemporary fiction' Sunday Times In God's Own Country, one of the most celebrated debut novels of recent years, Ross Raisin tells the story of solitary young farmer, Sam Marsdyke, and his extraordinary battle with the world. Expelled from school and cut off from the town, mistrusted by his parents and avoided by city incomers, Marsdyke is a loner until he meets rebellious new neighbour Josephine. But what begins as a friendship and leads to thoughts of escape across the moors turns to something much, much darker with every step. 'Powerful, engrossing, extraordinary, sinister, comic. A masterful debut' Observer

Download or read book The Obama Nation written by Jerome R. Corsi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thoroughly researched and documented book, the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry explains why the extreme leftism of an Obama presidency would leave the United States weakened, diminished and divided, why Obama must be defeated -- and how he can be. Barack Obama stepped onto the national political stage when the then-Illinois State senator addressed the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Soon after Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, author Jerome Corsi began researching Obama's personal and political background. Scrupulously sourced with more than 600 footnotes, The Obama Nation is the result of that research. By tracing Obama's career and influences from his early years in Hawaii and Indonesia, the beginnings of his political career in Chicago, his voting record in the Illinois legislature, his religious training and his adoption of Christianity through to his recent involvement in Kenyan politics, his political advisors and fundraising associates and his meteoric campaign for president, Jerome Corsi shows that an Obama presidency would, in his words, be "a repeat of the failed extremist politics that have characterized and plagued Democratic Party politics since the late 1960s." In this stunning and comprehensive new book, the reader will learn about: Obama's extensive connections with Islam and radical politics, from his father and step-father's Islamic backgrounds, to his Communist and socialist mentors in Hawaii and Chicago, to his long-term and close associations with former Weather Underground heroes William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn -- associations much closer than heretofore revealed by the press. Barack and Michelle's 20-year-long religious affiliation with the black-liberation theology of former Trinity United Church of Christ Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons have always been steeped in a rage first expressed by Franz Fanon , Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X, a rage that Corsi shows has deep meaning for Obama. Obama's continuing connections with Kenya, the homeland of his father, through his support for the candidacy of Raila Odinga, the radical socialist presidential contender who came to power amid Islamist violence and church burnings. Obama's involvement in the slum-landlord empire of the Chicago political fixer Tony Rezko, who helped to bankroll Obama's initial campaigns and to purchase of Barack and Michelle's dream-home property. The background and techniques of the Obama campaign's cult of personality, including the derivation of the words "hope" and change." Obama's far-left domestic policy, his controversial votes on abortion, his history of opposition to the Second Amendment, his determination to raise capital-gains taxes, his impractical plan to achieve universal health care, and his radical plan to tax Americans to fund a global-poverty-reduction program. Obama's naïve, anti-war, anti-nuclear foreign-policy, predicated on the reduction of the military, the eradication of nuclear weapons and an overconfidence in the power of his personality, as if belief in change alone could somehow transform international politics, achieve nuclear-weapons disarmament and withdrawal from Iraq without adverse consequences, for us, for the Iraqis or for Israel. Meticulously researched and documented, The Obama Nation is the definitive source for information on why and how Barack Obama must be defeated -- not by invective and general attacks, but by detailed arguments that are well-researched and fact-based.

Download or read book Hollywood Park written by Mikel Jollett and published by Celadon Books. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** “A Gen-X This Boy’s Life...Music and his fierce brilliance boost Jollett; a visceral urge to leave his background behind propels him to excel... In the end, Jollett shakes off the past to become the captain of his own soul. Hollywood Park is a triumph." —O, The Oprah Magazine "This moving and profound memoir is for anyone who loves a good redemption story." —Good Morning America, 20 Books We're Excited for in 2020 "Several years ago, Jollett began writing Hollywood Park, the gripping and brutally honest memoir of his life. Published in the middle of the pandemic, it has gone on to become one of the summer’s most celebrated books and a New York Times best seller..." –Los Angeles Magazine HOLLYWOOD PARK is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country’s most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer. We were never young. We were just too afraid of ourselves. No one told us who we were or what we were or where all our parents went. They would arrive like ghosts, visiting us for a morning, an afternoon. They would sit with us or walk around the grounds, to laugh or cry or toss us in the air while we screamed. Then they’d disappear again, for weeks, for months, for years, leaving us alone with our memories and dreams, our questions and confusion. ... So begins Hollywood Park, Mikel Jollett’s remarkable memoir. His story opens in an experimental commune in California, which later morphed into the Church of Synanon, one of the country’s most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leader’s mandate, all children, including Jollett and his older brother, were separated from their parents when they were six months old, and handed over to the cult’s “School.” After spending years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult one morning with his mother and older brother. But in many ways, life outside Synanon was even harder and more erratic. In his raw, poetic and powerful voice, Jollett portrays a childhood filled with abject poverty, trauma, emotional abuse, delinquency and the lure of drugs and alcohol. Raised by a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, subjected to the unpredictability of troubled step-fathers and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician. Hollywood Park is told at first through the limited perspective of a child, and then broadens as Jollett begins to understand the world around him. Although Mikel Jollett’s story is filled with heartbreak, it is ultimately an unforgettable portrayal of love at its fiercest and most loyal.

Download or read book Breakfast with the Dirt Cult written by Samuel Finlay and published by . This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I'm going to make a pinkie-swear with you right here and now, Tom Walton; when, not if, you return from Afghanistan, you must come up here and I will have a mad passionate affair with you..." With this proposal, Thomas Walton, an infantry soldier in Alpha Company, Second Platoon, arrives at the threshold of events that will change his life forever. Breakfast with the Dirt Cult chronicles the days of love and war in the life of Tom Walton. Torn between a beautiful, bibliophilic, Canadian ex-stripper and the hunt for Al-Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan, Walton finds himself forced to grapple with being a young man in the days of modernity. While Breakfast with the Dirt Cult has been written as a novel, it is based on a true story. The names have been changed and the chronology has been condensed for the sake of editing.

Download or read book Cult of the Irrelevant written by Michael Desch and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How professionalization and scholarly “rigor” made social scientists increasingly irrelevant to US national security policy To mobilize America’s intellectual resources to meet the security challenges of the post–9/11 world, US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates observed that “we must again embrace eggheads and ideas.” But the gap between national security policymakers and international relations scholars has become a chasm. In Cult of the Irrelevant, Michael Desch traces the history of the relationship between the Beltway and the Ivory Tower from World War I to the present day. Recounting key Golden Age academic strategists such as Thomas Schelling and Walt Rostow, Desch’s narrative shows that social science research became most oriented toward practical problem-solving during times of war and that scholars returned to less relevant work during peacetime. Social science disciplines like political science rewarded work that was methodologically sophisticated over scholarship that engaged with the messy realities of national security policy, and academic culture increasingly turned away from the job of solving real-world problems. In the name of scientific objectivity, academics today frequently engage only in basic research that they hope will somehow trickle down to policymakers. Drawing on the lessons of this history as well as a unique survey of current and former national security policymakers, Desch offers concrete recommendations for scholars who want to shape government work. The result is a rich intellectual history and an essential wake-up call to a field that has lost its way.

Download or read book Talking to Strangers written by Marianne Boucher and published by Doubleday Canada. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fans of Wild Wild Country, Scientology and the Aftermath and Uncover: Escaping NXIVM, a spellbinding graphic memoir about a teenage girl who was lured into a cult and later fought to escape and reclaim her identity. Welcome to a place where you are valued. Where everyone is kind. Where you can be your truest self. It was the summer of 1980, and Marianne Boucher was ready to chase her figure skating dream. Fuelled by the desire to rise above her mundane high-school life, she sought a new adventure as a glamorous performer in L.A. And then a chance encounter on a California beach introduced her to a new group of people. People who shared her distrust of the status quo. People who seemed to value authenticity and compassion above all else. And they liked her. Not Marianne the performer, but Marianne the person. Soon, she'd abandoned school, her skating and, most dramatically, her family to live with her new friends and help them fulfill their mission of "saving the world." She believed that no sacrifice was too great to be there--and to live with real purpose. They were helping people, and they cared about her . . . didn't they? Talking to Strangers is the true story of Marianne Boucher's experiences in a cult, where she was subjected to sophisticated brainwashing techniques that took away her freedom, and took over her mind. Told in mesmerizing graphic memoir form, with vivid text and art alike, Marianne shares how she fell in with devotees of a frightening spiritual abuser, and how she eventually, painfully, pulled herself out.

Download or read book Scarred written by Sarah Edmondson and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As seen in the HBO docuseries THE VOW: The shocking and subversive memoir of a 12-year-NXIVM-member-turned-whistleblower, and her inspiring true story of abuse, escape, and redemption. "'Master, would you brand me? It would be an honor.' From the second I climb onto the table, acutely aware that I am lying in the sweat of my sisters, I will have blocked that out. Lying there completely naked, I am at my most vulnerable but determined to prove my strength. I try to keep my legs closed as my body wills itself to protect my most private area. . . . I tell myself: I am a warrior. I birthed a human. I can handle pain. But nothing could have ever prepared me for the feel of this fire on my skin." Scarred is Sarah Edmondson's compelling memoir of her recruitment into the NXIVM cult, the 12 years she spent within the organization (during which she enrolled over 2,000 members and entered DOS—NXIVM's "secret sisterhood"), her breaking point, and her harrowing fight to get out, to expose Keith Raniere and the leadership, to help others, and to heal. Complete with personal photographs, Scarred is also an eye-opening story about abuses of power, female trust and friendship, and how sometimes the search to be "better" can override everything else. • In the tradition of Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman, Escape by Carolyn Jessop, and Troublemaker by Leah Remini • This tell-all follows Sarah from the moment she takes her first NXIVM seminar, to the invitation she accepts from her best friend, Lauren Salzman, into DOS, to her journey toward become a key witness in the federal case against its founders • Evokes questions about friendship, ethics, good and evil, making it a brilliant selection for book clubs Audio edition read by the author.

Download or read book One God One Cult One Nation written by Reinhard G. Kratz and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010-09-27 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent archaeological and biblical research challenges the traditional view of the history of ancient Israel. This book presents the latest findings of both academic disciplines regarding the United Monarchy of David and Solomon (‛One Nation’) and the cult reform under Josiah (‛One Cult’), raising the issue of fact versus fiction. The political and cultural interrelations in the Near East are illustrated on the example of the ancient city of Beth She'an/Scythopolis and are discussed as to their significance for the transformation in the conception of God (‛One God’). The volume contains 17 contributions by internationally eminent scholars from Israel, Finland and Germany.

Download or read book Chosen Country written by James Pogue and published by Henry Holt. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given unprecedented access to those participating in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a journalist reveals how politics and uncompromising religious belief divided communities.

Download or read book The Past is a Foreign Country written by David Lowenthal and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1985-11-14 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lowentahal looks at the benefits and burdens of the past, how we study the past, and how we change it.

Download or read book The Cult of Smart written by Fredrik deBoer and published by All Points Books. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of Vulture’s Top 10 Best Books of 2020! 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 teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: Academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability. Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that hierarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place. This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.

Download or read book Cultish written by Amanda Montell and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the widely praised Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how cultish groups from Jonestown and Scientology to SoulCycle and social media gurus use language as the ultimate form of power. What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . . Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.” But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day. Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish” everywhere.

Download or read book Cults and Country People written by Tom Bailey and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: