7 ms·
My favorite nonfiction books about cults, scams, and schemes
- lawn 1mo agoI quite like The Cult of Trump due to the relevance to current events.
- qingcharles 1mo agoReading these books shines a light on how the current events have come to pass.
- frankfrank13 1mo agoUnderground, by Murakami, was one of the better books I've read. It mostly covers victims, but the later chapters are interviews with various members of the Aum cult. It does a pretty decent job of presenting the psyche of the type of person who joins, stays, and some that leave. Although mostly relevant for what he calls the "Japanese psyche" I still found it very insightful.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- zenapollo 1mo agoI can also recommend the book Mindfuckers - a source book on the rise of acid fascism in America. Each chapter is about a different cult from the 60s and 70s including one on the Manson's. Super interesting read.
- enragebait 1mo ago[flagged]
- zabzonk 1mo agoNot exactly a cult, but... "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe. Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. It sounds like fun, until it doesn't so much. Soundtrack by The Grateful Dead.
- derektank 1mo agoThe author alluded to it, but I really think the BITE model of authoritarian control[0] is something everyone should know about. BITE stands for Behavioral, Information, Thought, and Emotional, which describes the 4 categories of controlling behaviors used by authoritarian groups (from religious cults, to the Maoist movement in post-war China, to multilevel marketing schemes). They really are surprisingly consistent, from controlling what members wear or how they cut their hair and encouraging sleep deprivation on the Behavioral side, to discouraging access to external sources of information, punishing people for asking questions or engaging in struggle sessions to get people to confess to false beliefs, and isolating people from the other people in their life that may love and care for them. Not everyone or every group that exhibits some of these behaviors is going to be a cult. But the warning signs are something everyone should be aware of. [0] https://freedomofmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/The-BITE-Model.pdf https://freedomofmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/The-BIT...
- linohh 1mo agoSteven Hassan, who developed the BITE model, is really missing on that list. You're absolutely correct, not everything that checks the boxes of the model necessarily is a cult, but more often than not it's only a small step to transform into one.
- derektank 1mo agoHassan’s own account of being recruited into the Moonies while he was in college really highlights an important point too, almost anybody can fall into a cult. They prey on nearly universal human traits. I wish we had an effort to equip everyone with this knowledge in the same way we teach kids to stop, drop, and roll if they ever catch fire. Especially in our hyper-connected age where anyone with an internet connection might be exposed to a cult.
- ianburrell 1mo agoThere should also be training on how to avoid scams. They have gotten so common on the internet and it is easy for anyone to fall for greed or fear. I wonder if being wary about scams would help with cults.
- swatcoder 1mo agoI'm sure these are all entertaining and engaging and reveal some exciting insider details, but it's worth keeping in mind that memoirs like these are closer to fiction than most things we think of as "nonfiction". They're individual testimonies, often nearly impossible to verify, and written in an era where "autofiction" and "creative non-fiction" are mature commercial genres with their own tropes, standards, forms, and conceits. If you're intellectually curious about "cults, scams, and schemes", there's a whole other -- drier but more earnest -- world of nonfiction to be found in places like JSTOR or the catalogs of academic presses.
- ktallett 1mo agoAs an academic, I wouldn't like to state papers are any different in regards to reliability of sources. They will just be testimonies and author viewpoint.
- swatcoder 1mo agoWell, there's certainly no objectivity in academic sociology or history, but there's a culture of trying to build narratives and justify viewpoints through richer collections of evidence: multiple testimonies, contemporaneous records and primary ephemera, prior publications, etc In contrast, memoir is often simply held to the standard of "is there strong and ready evidence against this claim, or can it at least hold up as the author's subjective interpretation of some event" because it's purpose and history as a genre is entirely different. Its audiences aren't academic peers hungry for material against which they can safely anchor their own work, but tens of thousands of airplane readers who are hungry for titillation or personal relatability.
- gmiller123456 1mo ago"Seductive Poison" is a good one. It's a story about the "Koolaid suicide" cult. It's one lady's story about how she got indoctrinated, abused, and ultimately escaped from Jonestown. It's told from her perspective, and really does a good job of showing how a seemingly reasonable person can get wrapped up in that.
- rudy6912 1mo ago+1 I loved Seductive Poison and have it on my list to re-read.
- ccppurcell 1mo agoIf you haven't read it already, Fads and Fallacies by Martin Gardner is a great book. A bit more focused on pseudoscience than on cults but Scientology comes up for instance.
- ktallett 1mo agoIf we are talking about scams an obvious one is Bad Blood, about the Theranos scam.
- Hackbraten 1mo agoNo literature list on MLM scams can be complete without Bridget Read's meticulously researched 2025 book "Little Bosses Everywhere".
- dackdel 1mo agosound like you lead a cult called "MERLBE" make everyone read little bosses everywhere.
- WheelsAtLarge 1mo agoMLMs have to be up there with the biggest scams, ever. My mother was scammed over and over under the guise of friendship. As a kid I remember there was very little money but there was always enough to buy another order of whatever. The ugliest part is that once you become a member you fall into the trap, you become part of the scam and become a scammer too. It's ultimately very sad once you learn it's a legal pyramid that eventually collapses and you're left holding the bag. And your "friends" led you to it.
- pjc50 1mo agoI would like to add to the list the excellent history of frauds "Lying for Money", by Dan Davies.
- stonecharioteer 1mo agoI was approached by people trying to get me into a pyramid scheme at least thrice in my life. One was a friend who got into it in high school and said I could get in on it too for 100 USD (~2004). Another was a random stranger I struck up a conversation with at a bookstore in around 2011. The last was an old boss, who attributes his drastic weight loss to a strange drug that he's peddling and says I can get in on. It's crazy. I was 17, 24 and 37 and all 3 times I knew there was something super suspicious about these and never engaged.
- aruggirello 1mo agoA friend of mine was pulled into Amway and tried hard to pull me in, resulting in the end of our friendship.
- hnmu4c5zar 1mo ago[dead]
- _dain_ 1mo agoExtraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a rollicking fun read
- jsrcout 1mo agoSeconded. It's almost encyclopedic in scope. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that the hilarious chapter on English slang of the time was my favorite.
- Uhhrrr 1mo agoHoy, cocky!
- dgellow 1mo agoJust know that it isn’t considered a reliable historical record, a good amount of the book is exaggerated and some of the sources were newspaper parodies interpreted as facts. Still a good read though
- webdoodle 1mo agoThis list is incomplete without Eric Hoffer's True Believer, which is probably a reference/source for all of these other books. It's basically how to build a fanatic, a cult and a mass movement. It's also required reading for Terrorism studies classes, and CIA personnel, the latter, using it to conduct regime change in banarepublics and oil bearing nations. Of course now it's used on everyone who uses smartphones and social media. It's a Brave New World, and you're carrying the main tool to mind control you in your pocket. Bonus, you probably pay for it too!
- naniel 1mo agoInteresting list! I really enjoyed "The Square and the Tower" by Niall Ferguson. Not exactly in the same realm as these, but pretty close and definitely eye-opening
- meonkeys 1mo ago+1 to Cultish. Another great one: The Confidence Game by Maria Konnikova.
- thinkingemote 1mo agoFor a British view, I like "Spying In Guru Land" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2487851.Spying_in_Guru_Land https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2487851.Spying_in_Guru_L...
- cousin_it 1mo agoMy favorite read about cults is this short interview with Richard DeMille about Ron Hubbard: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/miller/interviews/demille.htm https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/miller/interviews/... The interviewee comes across as extremely level-headed, maybe as a reaction to having been in a cult and escaped.
- pcblues 1mo agoLooks like she is still trying to make money. So the cult didn't work out. I left a cult. If she wants to use the word for sympathy, talk about the really bad ones. Start with Nebraska and work back from there. Sympathy farmer.
- randycupertino 1mo agoNo One Would Listen by Harry Markopolos about how he knew Bernie Madoff was a ponzi scheme is a great book in this genre. Markopolos went to the SEC with proof, multiple times, and each time the SEC blew him off.
- int32_64 1mo agoNever read Michael Lewis's book about SBF. It's so bad it permanently ruined him as an author in my mind, I doubt the verity of any of the other books he wrote as a result of it.
- hingler36 1mo agoIt really revealed how much he relied on the gift of hindsight when writing his earlier books. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it's something he should have been aware of when doing a book on an ongoing event.
- kmac_ 1mo agoWhy? I really enjoyed the book, over-colorized, probably written to be made into a movie. He never portrayed SBF in a good or bad light, but he showed the mess SBF and his companions made.
- etc-hosts 1mo agoLewis wrote about and gave plenty of interviews outside of the book about how incredibly inciteful SBF was... basically up until the moment of his arrest.
- kmac_ 1mo agoI got the impression of an "Elizabeth Holmes is wonderful" vibe from those interviews, showing how people perceived SBF. The overall image of SBF from the book is pretty bad, but it's never stated directly.
- etc-hosts 1mo agospeaking of Elizabeth Holmes, I wonder who handles her public relations. https://x.com/ElizabethHolmes/status/2091684431308227056 https://x.com/ElizabethHolmes/status/2091684431308227056
- xhevahir 1mo ago
- pahool 1mo agoStripping the Gurus by Geoffrey Falk is an interesting survey in this vein, albeit covering a previous generation of problematic cults. Gurus like Chogyam Trungpa, Adi Da (or whatever name Franklin Jones was going by at the time), even reaching back to Paramahansa Yogananda and Ramakrishna. His take is perhaps a little juvenile at times, but I think the book is an interesting survey.
- glimshe 1mo agoThe game "Cult of the Lamb" is a great way to learn about cults :)
- cogman10 1mo agoLook, fun quick game that I'd not knock anyone for playing. But it's not informative about cults in the slightest. It's just a caricature of what "satanic panic" [1] people thought a cult was. Real cults are much more normal, which is why they are so easy to accidentally fall into. The worst cults have pretty mainstream acceptance. Often, they are simply break-offs of already well accepted religions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic
- omsta 1mo agoCultish (by Amanda Montell) is great. It also defines really well how Claude speaks currently---avant la lettre, of course. Language is a big part of the book: one example is how Scientologists can recognize each other in the wild from the language they have unknowingly adopted even for everyday conversations.
- dgellow 1mo agoI’m native French speaker and do not understand what you mean with “avant la lettre”. That translates to “before the letter”, what do you mean?
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- mistersquid 1mo ago> I’m native French speaker and do not understand what you mean with “avant la lettre”. That translates to “before the letter”, what do you mean? Metaphorical language, of which French is a rich source, often prevents native speakers from understanding. Literal translations are of no avail. > avant la lettre : before the letter : before the (specified) word or concept existed [0] [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/avant%20la%20lettre https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/avant%20la%20lett...
- dgellow 1mo agoTIL, I should have just googled it, I assumed it was a bad auto complete Thanks!
- BuyMyBitcoins 1mo agoAs a non-French speaker, I had assumed a native speaker would suspect that this was another instance of English taking something from French and mangling it into something worse.
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- fabriceleal 1mo agoOk, now I want the fiction books about cults, scams and schemes.
- zabzonk 1mo ago"Illuminatus!" I read this while suffering from the worst attack of flu (fever, hallucinations, the works) I have ever had, Edinburgh circa 1975. I thought I was going mad. Never dared to read it again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy
- acid_fish 1mo agoTraumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler (a novella that inspired the Eyes Wide Shut movie)
- cogman10 1mo agoOne definition of a cult I've liked is "A cult is a group you can't leave with your dignity intact". You can really get a good understanding if something is a cult by the way they talk about their ex members. A healthy organization will pretty much just say "Sad to see you go, come back anytime". Unhealthy organizations spend a fair amount of time warning members about how how dangerous/bad/sinful/sad/miserable their ex members are. And yes, I'd call several mainstream religions cults because of this. I'd not argue that something isn't a cult if they don't fit this definition, but a very large number of the most damaging cults do have this behavior.
- graemep 1mo ago> And yes, I'd call several mainstream religions cults because of this Which ones ? Not something I have seen myself I do like your definition. Its a pretty clear and meaningful distinction and linked to other cult behaviours such as encouraging members to cease contact with ex-members.
- CrazyStat 1mo agoPeople I know personally were strongly ostracized after leaving Jehovah's Witnesses (in the US) and the Catholic church (in Latin America). Cut out of their existing social circles, immediate family members refusing to attend their wedding over it, etc.
- kstrauser 1mo agoJW was the first one I thought of by that definition. I was raised Southern Baptist. When I stopped going, the church contacted me a couple of times to say they missed us and asked if everything was OK, and to say they'd love to have us back if we wanted to come back sometime. My parents weren't thrilled but that's less religion, more family dynamics: it was much the same when they found out I didn't support their preferred political party anymore. That was about it, though. The church didn't lean on us in any way, or tell people to stop talking to us, or use any other means to cajole or punish us. My thinking on cults is very similar to all this, plus another distinguisher. A cult typically requires you to join before you get all the information about what you're signing up for. I've never been a Muslim, but know that if you walk into a mosque, someone will cheerfully greet you and load you up with a Koran and all kinds of other reading material. Same with any mainstream Protestant church, or the Catholic church, or Hindu, or Buddhist, etc. In fact, many/most churches won't let you join until you've shown that you understand that church's beliefs. Compare and contrast with, say, Scientology, which is notoriously different.
- groundzeros2015 1mo agoI have no sympathy for group bullying, hazing, or manipulation, but the concept of a cult seems to only be possible post-enlightenment. We say there is a secular society outside that we always need to preserve and that sets limits on the level of fanaticism of our private group memberships. But the unanswered philosophical problem is if you actually believe in those things doesn’t some level of fanaticism make sense? In 2026 so we are so divorced from organizations and non-secular sources of information that I don’t think we can even talk about the subject. A 1950s neighborhood bowling club looks like a jihadist training camp from our completely detached ways of living.
- paulryanrogers 1mo ago> A 1950s neighborhood bowling club looks like a jihadist training camp from our completely detached ways of living. Why? There are still bowling clubs? People just organize themselves into more hobbies and sometimes even virtual communities than before.
- groundzeros2015 1mo agoBecause of the level of commitment, loyalty, and group sacrifice expected. The article isn’t about subject matter. Virtual communities require no group sacrifice. You join the lobby and you leave. Maybe there are some niche WOW guilds out there.
- paulryanrogers 1mo agoPeople still commit to clubs, sports, and other hobbies. I enjoy an online DOS gaming club (IRC, video calls, forums, and podcast). Time is still a sacrifice in any group activity.
- groundzeros2015 1mo agoThat’s great. They still don’t have 1950s ethics around organizational membership. To give one example. The Boy Scouts is a relatively tame org. It has different offices, voting, treasury, awards, oaths, meeting notes. All of that is basically dead, but was in full swing at that time.
- webnrrd2k 1mo agoHighly recommend: Life 102 - What to do when your guru sues you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_102
- specialfred 1mo ago[flagged]
- specialfred 1mo ago[flagged]
- dgellow 1mo agoThe podcast « Decoding the Gurus » covers the topic in an entertaining way: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-the-gurus/id1531266667 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-the-gurus/id1...
- etc-hosts 1mo agoA lot of topics on that podcast are extremely relevant to my interests, but I just can't get past Christopher Kavanagh's accent. Maybe I can fix it with AI...
- dgellow 1mo agoIt’s an accent, there is nothing to fix, it’s something you familiarize yourself with
- internet_points 1mo agowhat is his accent? (I don't mind listening to it, but now I can't stop trying to place it, hehe)
- dgellow 1mo ago
- encyclic 1mo agoIf you want to know about the ins and outs of more personal cons and scams, the Howdunit series of books are great. Ostensibly meant to help writers get details correct, they are fascinating reads. Dating from the 1990's they predate scams and cons using the web, mobile phones, and other tech, but so many cons even today have roots going back to even the 1800's. https://www.goodreads.com/series/76228-howdunit-series https://www.goodreads.com/series/76228-howdunit-series
- peteforde 1mo agoI'm sure that these are good or even excellent books, but this topic is deep in my nerd wheelhouse and as a list it's alarmingly sparse on the titles people who are deeply into this stuff actually recommend. The single most glaring omission is the absence of "Combating Cult Mind Control" by Steven Hassan. This is the first book to read or listen to about cults, full stop. His other books ("The Cult of Trump" and "Freedom of Mind") are solid, too.
- thataccount 1mo agoI tend to dislike most of these titles, as people read about one cult that has enough exposure such that a book can be written on it, then decide that everything they don't agree with is also a cult and stretch definitions around to confirm that bias. They don't, however, see coca-cola or a thousand other marketing schemes as "cultish" in any way.
- LastTrain 1mo agoWhat, since we can’t all be as smart as you we don’t get to read anything?
- thataccount 1mo agoI think what I'm saying here, if anything, is that people as "smart" as me don't read most of this garbage. So, the corollary to your question is that dumb people read dumb things.
- JennyWeston 1mo agoGoing Clear is a wonderful book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_Clear_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_Clear_(book) I loved the break down of how Scientology finds people. The simplicity is stunning. People need connection, they need to feel important and that they have agency. Feeling "smart", better than, a member of... feels good. Promises of a simple, easy, known path to getting what you want will always be appealing. Figuring it out for yourself will always be harder. It's no surprise that people take the easy route.
- Taniwha 1mo agoFrom my observation Scientology starts by teaching you to be selfish, more self assertish, in the process you end up pushing your friends and family away, but guess what, you have some new friends in the 'church' Just in case anyone here finds themselves falling into their world I'll save you $0.5M: all your problems are caused by you being infested with murdered space aliens
- p_j_w 1mo ago>People need connection, they need to feel important and that they have agency. Feeling "smart", better than, a member of... feels good. Doesn't sound much different from the Abrahamic religions.
- codechicago277 1mo agoOr Silicon Valley.
- ubermonkey 1mo agoGoing Clear is probably one of my top ten books EVER. If you enjoyed it, please note that Lawrence Wright has written several other equally fantastic books. He also wrote The Looming Tower, on the runup to 9/11. It covers the geopolitics that led to Islamic fanaticism as well as the intelligence failures in the US that allowed the attacks to happen. I believe fully and unironically that it ought to be required reading.
- barbs 1mo ago
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- meigwilym 1mo agoIt just occurred to me that Trump is an excellent example of a cult leader. He demands loyalty, acts as he wills and humiliates anyone who leaves.
- pessimizer 1mo agoHow has a recommendation of 5 bestsellers from nobody in particular manage to sit on the front page for two days with 250 upvotes? Is HN being punked?
- snapcaster 1mo agoIt's an interesting topic and attacking the author as a "nobody" is very rude. If the content was recommended to you by paul graham or some other dork you guys worship would it be better?
- nilamo 1mo agoWeekends are a different vibe for hn
- jsbg 1mo agoreminds me of this old youtube classic "how to start a cult" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBK5aKOr2Fw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBK5aKOr2Fw
- zshrdlu 1mo agoIn a very different vein, I have read a number of books recently that feature a surprising amount of "scam and schemes": - The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, about the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. A lot of people were scammed into settling the high plains by railroad salesmanship and other "real estate" scams. - The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown. A book about the harrowing Donner Party. Scamming and scheming are what draw them out to that expedition. - The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. WW1 history but it boils down to the scheming of various men in the respective countries. - The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, Daniel Yergin. The oil rush from America to the World. Scheming features prominently to say the least.
- jackbravo 1mo agoNo one has mentioned Ishmael from Daniel Quinn, where they theorize how modern culture is a cult (has it's own mythology) ingrained to hate or antagonize indigenous cultures, and how even our founding stories (Adam and Eve) are probably adapted from earlier stories from indigenous peoples.
- cult_throwaway 1mo agoI'm still trying to grasp the dual nature of "cults". These organizations can be an amazing vehicle for personal and spiritual transformation, and yet can be so dangerous and destructive if you let them override your personal judgment and recognition of what you actually want in life, and preventing you from looking outside... I was in one such organization. I initially felt that my life improved greatly... but in the long term the "cultish" aspects ended up having negative effects on me (for one I got into debt thinking it would help me, and thinking that I "needed" them and couldn't see possibilities outside. At my "lowest" I remember walking into a library and being afraid of picking up any books not suggested by them ) Many people, coming from such "cults", report how early-on the techniques and teachings really helped them (which is what got them hooked). AND ALSO plenty of people stay their whole lives because they continue to find them highly beneficial! ... but not everyone Something I came to understand is that different people have different spiritual and life paths -- and so the one-size-fits-all approach of these organizations might not be appropriate for everyone. Yet, they basically tell you to "trust the process", to effectively suspend judgment (which actually kind of makes sense -- if you assume they indeed have "a path" very different from what you have done your whole life, maybe your current judgment might indeed not be able to grasp it...) But if you are too "open" to every single thing the leader says, you might absorb ideas that are not good for you based on who you are and where you currently are in your life (or in some cases ideas that are not good for anyone lol) -- this is especially true if you can't directly talk to the leader to clarify. Confusingly, many of these realizations I had echo certain "teachings" I have heard within the organization, even though apparently contradicted by other teachings or attitudes. "Ultimately you should listen to your self; use your discernment; do what feels right" but then also implying that you should be doing all the things they tell you to do, and if you're not successful it's because you're not doing enough and making you feel guilty (and there is a lot of things you're "suggested" to do; practically impossible to be doing everything). "You should learn from everyone" but also --> heavily implying that you shouldn't read books or listen to teachers that weren't vetted by the group, lest it lead you astray. Overall, I think my time in this group was important to my life journey, and that I was transformed in positive ways and learned a lot, but that I "overstayed my time" and should have looked at other things way earlier, and that there are things I have yet to learn that are best learned from other sources. I still think there was a lot of very positive things in that organization, and thinking maybe one day I might rejoin -- just I would need to be very careful and intentional about what my goal is for doing so. Maybe HN is not the best place to ask this, but are there books that explore these "cults" from a more neutral or "dual" angle like this? Could it be possible to create such a spiritual-adjacent group providing a lot of the benefits of a "cult" without the negative aspects? In any case, some of the books posted here look interesting and I'll look into them.