Download or read book World Famous Cults and Fanatics written by Colin Wilson and published by Magpie. This book was released on 2011-08-18 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dangerous madmen or divinely inspired prophets? From murdering religious sects like the Assassins and the Thugs, to the orgies of the little known Khlysty and the self-mutilations of the Skloptzi; including modern day killers like the vicious Manson Family and the violent racism of the Ku Klux Klan - this book shows how cults and fanatics had such a powerful effect on the world.
Download or read book World Famous Cults and Fanatics written by Wilson and published by . This book was released on 1992-12-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Exploring New Religions written by George D. Chryssides and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 1999-12-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An objective, well-researched history of contemporary new religions and cults.New religious movements - popularly known as cults - arouse strong public opinion and most books on the subject are polemical, giving hostile reaction rather than informed exploration. Exploring New Religions provides an account of a wide variety of new religions, focusing on their origins, beliefs and practices, which are set out in a dispassionate way, leaving readers to form their own value judgements. George Chryssides provides important analysis of the killer cults-the Jonestown People's Temple, Waco, the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate-examining the factors that made their followers willing to die for their cause. Older groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses and Latter-day Saints (Mormons) are discussed, and Chryssides traces the development of a variety of strands of spirituality, ranging from New Thought, Spiritualism and Theosophy. Subsequent chapters include the Baha'i, the Family (formerly Children of God), the Hare Krishna movement (ISKCON), the Jesus Army, the Rastafarians, the Church of Scientology, Transcendental Meditation (TM) and the Unification Church ('the Moonies'). Lower profile groups are also discussed including: EST (Erhard Seminar Training), the New Kadampa Tradition, Brahma Kumaris, Sai Baba, Subud and the Western Buddhist Order. A study of the New Age phenomenon, and an account of societal responses to new religions at religious, societal and political levels is also included.
Download or read book American Messiahs False Prophets of a Damned Nation written by Adam Morris and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A history with sweeping implications, American Messiahs challenges our previous misconceptions about “cult” leaders and their messianic power. Mania surrounding messianic prophets has defined the national consciousness since the American Revolution. From Civil War veteran and virulent anticapitalist Cyrus Teed, to the dapper and overlooked civil rights pioneer Father Divine, to even the megalomaniacal Jim Jones, these figures have routinely been dismissed as dangerous and hysterical outliers. After years of studying these emblematic figures, Adam Morris demonstrates that messiahs are not just a classic trope of our national culture; their visions are essential for understanding American history. As Morris demonstrates, these charismatic, if flawed, would-be prophets sought to expose and ameliorate deep social ills—such as income inequality, gender conformity, and racial injustice. Provocative and long overdue, this is the story of those who tried to point the way toward an impossible “American Dream”: men and women who momentarily captured the imagination of a nation always searching for salvation.
Download or read book Loving Literature written by Deidre Shauna Lynch and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-12-22 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most common—and wounding—misconceptions about literary scholars today is that they simply don’t love books. While those actually working in literary studies can easily refute this claim, such a response risks obscuring a more fundamental question: why should they? That question led Deidre Shauna Lynch into the historical and cultural investigation of Loving Literature. How did it come to be that professional literary scholars are expected not just to study, but to love literature, and to inculcate that love in generations of students? What Lynch discovers is that books, and the attachments we form to them, have played a vital role in the formation of private life—that the love of literature, in other words, is deeply embedded in the history of literature. Yet at the same time, our love is neither self-evident nor ahistorical: our views of books as objects of affection have clear roots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century publishing, reading habits, and domestic history. While never denying the very real feelings that warm our relationship to books, Loving Literature nonetheless serves as a riposte to those who use the phrase “the love of literature” as if its meaning were transparent. Lynch writes, “It is as if those on the side of love of literature had forgotten what literary texts themselves say about love’s edginess and complexities.” With this masterly volume, Lynch restores those edges and allows us to revel in those complexities.
Download or read book Colin Wilson the First Fifty Years written by Colin Stanley and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of 'The Outsider', this comprehensive, annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources has been fully revised and updated, incorporating an author chronology and an exhaustive index. Aimed at scholars, collectors and fans worldwide it also includes details of non-English translations of Wilson's work.
Download or read book Scandals written by Colin Wilson and published by . This book was released on 1996-05 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Why Waco written by James D. Tabor and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1993 government assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, resulted in the deaths of four federal agents and eighty Branch Davidians, including seventeen children. Whether these tragic deaths could have been avoided is still debatable, but what seems clear is that the events in Texas have broad implications for religious freedom in America. James Tabor and Eugene Gallagher's bold examination of the Waco story offers the first balanced account of the siege. They try to understand what really happened in Waco: What brought the Branch Davidians to Mount Carmel? Why did the government attack? How did the media affect events? The authors address the accusations of illegal weapons possession, strange sexual practices, and child abuse that were made against David Koresh and his followers. Without attempting to excuse such actions, they point out that the public has not heard the complete story and that many media reports were distorted. The authors have carefully studied the Davidian movement, analyzing the theology and biblical interpretation that were so central to the group's functioning. They also consider how two decades of intense activity against so-called cults have influenced public perceptions of unorthodox religions. In exploring our fear of unconventional religious groups and how such fear curtails our ability to tolerate religious differences, Why Waco? is an unsettling wake-up call. Using the events at Mount Carmel as a cautionary tale, the authors challenge all Americans, including government officials and media representatives, to closely examine our national commitment to religious freedom.
Download or read book The Stammering Century written by Gilbert Seldes and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gilbert Seldes, the author of The Stammering Century, writes: This book is not a record of the major events in American history during the nineteenth century. It is concerned with minor movements, with the cults and manias of that period. Its personages are fanatics, and radicals, and mountebanks. Its intention is to connect these secondary movements and figures with the primary forces of the century, and to supply a back- ground in American history for the Prohibitionists and the Pentecostalists; the diet-faddists and the dealers in mail-order Personality; the play censors and the Fundamentalists; the free-lovers and eugenists; the cranks and possibly the saints. Sects, cults, manias, movements, fads, religious excitements, and the relation of each of these to the others and to the orderly progress of America are the subject. The subject is of course as timely at the beginning of the twenty-first century as when the book first appeared in 1928. Seldes’s fascinated and often sympathetic accounts of dreamers, rogues, frauds, sectarians, madmen, and geniuses from Jonathan Edwards to the messianic murderer Matthias have established The Stammering Century not only as a lasting contribution to American history but as a classic in its own right.
Download or read book After the Fire written by Will Hill and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Edgar Award finalist A gripping and unforgettable story of survival after life in a cult, inspired by the survivors of the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas, 1993 The things I've seen are burned into me, like scars that refuse to fade. Before, she lived inside a fence with her family. After, she's trapped, now in a federal facility. Before, she was never allowed to leave the property, never allowed to talk to Outsiders, never allowed to speak her mind. After, there are too many people asking questions, wanting to know what happened to her, trying to find out who she really is. Before, she thought she was being protected from something. After, people are telling her that now she's finally safe. She isn't sure what's better, before or after, all she knows is that there are questions she can't answer, and if everything she's been told is a lie, how can she know who's telling the truth now? Suspenseful and moving, After the Fire is perfect for readers looking for cult books and stories young adult historical fiction binge-worthy teen thrillers an intense, ripped-from-the-headlines plot compulsively readable books that keep you hooked until the very end Praise for After the Fire: "Genuinely different...thrilling and spellbinding!"—Patrick Ness, #1 New York Times bestselling author "The gripping story of survival and escape...It will keep you up late until you get to the very end."—Maureen Johnson, New York Times bestselling author of Truly Devious "A heartrending portrait of a young girl's struggle to survive a domineering religious sect and the resilience of the human spirit; this belongs on every YA shelf." —School Library Journal
Download or read book Cult of the Spider Queen written by S A Sidor and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ancient horror deep in the Amazon jungle spins a web of nightmares to ensnare adventurers, explorers, and their souls, in this skin-crawling Arkham Horror novel of cosmic dread. Arkham-based investigative reporter Andy van Nortwick has discovered that famed Amazon explorer and film director Maude Brion, missing for the past year while seeking an ancient tribe, is very much alive. But when a rescue mission ventures deep into the jungle in search of her ill-fated expedition, the real reasons for her silence become horrifyingly clear.
Download or read book Mankind United written by Arthur Bell and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Doomsday Cult written by John Lofland and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The True Believer written by Eric Hoffer and published by Time Life Medical. This book was released on 1980 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Underground written by Haruki Murakami and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2001-04-10 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this haunting work of journalistic investigation, Haruki Murakami tells the story of the horrific terrorist attack on Japanese soil that shook the entire world. On a clear spring day in 1995, five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system. In attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakmi talks to the people who lived through the catastrophe, and in so doing lays bare the Japanese psyche. As he discerns the fundamental issues that led to the attack, Murakami paints a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere.
Download or read book A History of the Apocalypse written by Catalin Negru and published by Catain Negru. This book was released on 2023-01-20 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion. For thousands of years this thing has dictated which people should live and which people should die, what shape our buildings should have or what colors our garments should contain, what food people should eat or what words people should speak. If religion is the opium of the masses, then beliefs about the end of the world are like overdoses. People touched by such beliefs no longer rely on a hidden, personal and intimate god, contemplated upon from the safe distance of the beating human heart. They live with the promise of divine intervention at a grand scale on the current coordinates of space and time. This can be an exceptional motivator and a game changer in terms of civil obedience, both at an individual and collective level. In the name of an immediate and palpable deity people can commit shocking cruelties. However, such belief can also account for some of the most exceptional social developments in human history.
Download or read book Raven written by Tim Reiterman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The basis for the upcoming HBO miniseries and the "definitive account of the Jonestown massacre" (Rolling Stone) -- now available for the first time in paperback. Tim Reiterman’s Raven provides the seminal history of the Rev. Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and the murderous ordeal at Jonestown in 1978. This PEN Award–winning work explores the ideals-gone-wrong, the intrigue, and the grim realities behind the Peoples Temple and its implosion in the jungle of South America. Reiterman’s reportage clarifies enduring misperceptions of the character and motives of Jim Jones, the reasons why people followed him, and the important truth that many of those who perished at Jonestown were victims of mass murder rather than suicide. This widely sought work is restored to print after many years with a new preface by the author, as well as the more than sixty-five rare photographs from the original volume.
