
Cults Like Us
Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America
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Narrated by:
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Jane Borden
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By:
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Jane Borden
About this listen
An “engrossing, unputdownable” (Amanda Montell, New York Times bestselling author) pop history that explains why the eccentric doomsday beliefs of our Puritan founders are still driving American culture today, contextualizes the current rise in far-right extremism as a natural result of our latent indoctrination, and proposes that the United States is the largest cult of all.
Since the Mayflower sidled up to Plymouth Rock, cult ideology has been ingrained in the DNA of the United States. In this eye-opening book, journalist Jane Borden argues that Puritan doomsday belief never went away; it went secular and became American culture. From our fascination with cowboys and superheroes to our allegiance to influencers and self-help, susceptibility to advertising, and undying devotion to the self-made man, Americans remain particularly vulnerable to a specific brand of cult-like thinking.
With in-depth research and compelling insight, Borden uncovers the American history you didn’t learn in school, including how we are still being brainwashed, making us a nation of easy marks for con artists and strong men. Along the way, she also revisits some of the most fascinating cults in this country—including, the Mankind United and Love Has Won—presenting them as integral parts of our national psyche rather than aberrations.
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Performance
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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.
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Get this book ASAP
- By chris boutte on 06-17-21
By: Amanda Montell
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Drunk on Genocide
- Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany (Battlegrounds: Cornell Studies in Military History)
- By: Edward B. Westermann
- Narrated by: Kevin Meyer
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In Drunk on Genocide, Edward B. Westermann reveals how, over the course of the Third Reich, scenes involving alcohol consumption and revelry among the SS and police became a routine part of rituals of humiliation in the camps, ghettos, and killing fields of Eastern Europe. Westermann draws on a vast range of newly unearthed material to explore how alcohol consumption served as a literal and metaphorical lubricant for mass murder. It facilitated "performative masculinity," expressly linked to physical or sexual violence.
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Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out
- By: Rick Alan Ross
- Narrated by: Daniel Adam Day
- Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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You’ve seen them in movies and on TV, but cults are more prevalent than you think - and they’re armed with strategies that can brainwash and persuade even the most unlikely of candidates. But how do individuals get involved with cults in the first place, and what steps can be taken to “deprogram” and heal those who have been drawn into these damaging groups? These questions and more are addressed in Cults Inside Out, written by leading cult expert Rick Alan Ross.
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Informative and interesting read!
- By Amazon Customer on 07-15-21
By: Rick Alan Ross
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Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies
- The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and Many, Many More
- By: Arthur Goldwag
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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An indispensable guide, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies connects the dots and sets the record straight on a host of greedy gurus and murderous messiahs, crepuscular cabals, and suspicious coincidences. Some topics are familiar - the Kennedy assassinations, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, the People's Temple and Heaven's Gate - and some surprising, like Oulipo, a select group of intellectuals who created wild formulas for creating literary masterpieces, and the Chauffeurs, an 18th-century society of French home invaders, who set fire to their victims' feet.
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Disappointing
- By Dean on 08-21-09
By: Arthur Goldwag
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A Devil Went Down to Georgia
- Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton
- By: Deb Miller Landau
- Narrated by: Callie Beaulieu
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1987 murder of Lita McClinton Sullivan sent shock waves through the affluent Atlanta suburb of Buckhead, Georgia like few other crimes before it. The neighborhood, with its stately mansions and top-tier schools, was simply not the kind of place where women were gunned down in broad daylight. How many socialites had enemies so dangerous they would be murdered by a hit man pretending to deliver roses on an early winter morning?
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A true victim focused story
- By bbgirl27 on 05-19-25
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The Fifteen
- Murder, Retribution, and the Forgotten Story of Nazi POWs in America
- By: William Geroux
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The revelatory true story of the long-forgotten POW camps for German soldiers erected in hundreds of small U.S. towns during World War II, and the secret Nazi killings that ensnared fifteen brave American POWs in a high-stakes showdown.
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Had no idea that we had almost 400,000 German prisoners in the country during World War II
- By JDM808 on 06-27-25
By: William Geroux
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Journeys of the Mind
- A Life in History
- By: Peter Brown
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 30 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the "neglected half-millennium" now known as late antiquity was crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age.
By: Peter Brown
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Cult Following
- The Extreme Sects That Capture Our Imaginations—and Take Over Our Lives
- By: J. W. Ocker
- Narrated by: Kimberly M. Wetherell
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In Cult Following, Ocker sheds light on the terrifying attraction of cults, demonstrating the elasticity of belief, the desperateness of belonging, and the tragedy of trust.
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The closing was a drive home for the message of this book and was touching.
- By andrea on 01-22-25
By: J. W. Ocker
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1999
- The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times
- By: Ross Benes
- Narrated by: Josh Innerst
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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From pro wrestling and Pokémon to Vince McMahon and Jerry Springer, this look at the low culture of the late '90s reveals its profound impact and how it continues to affect our culture and society today.
By: Ross Benes
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The Ministry of Truth
- The Biography of George Orwell's 1984
- By: Dorian Lynskey
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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1984 isn't just a novel; it's a key to understanding the modern world. George Orwell's final work is a treasure chest of ideas and memes - Big Brother, the Thought Police, Doublethink, Newspeak, 2+2=5 - that gain potency with every year. Particularly in 2016, when the election of Donald Trump made it a best seller ("Ministry of Alternative Facts", anyone?).
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words from MY mouth...
- By Amazon Customer on 08-02-19
By: Dorian Lynskey
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Words for My Comrades
- A Political History of Tupac Shakur
- By: Dean Van Nguyen
- Narrated by: Landon Woodson
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Before his murder at age twenty-five, Tupac Shakur rose to staggering artistic heights as the preeminent storyteller of the 1990s, building, in the process, one of the most iconic public personas of the last half century. He recorded no fewer than ten platinum albums, starred in major films, and became an activist and political hero known the world over. In this cultural history, journalist Van Nguyen reckons with Tupac’s coming of age, fame, and cultural capital, and how the political machinations that shaped him as a boy have since buoyed his legacy as a revolutionary.
By: Dean Van Nguyen
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A Greek Tragedy
- One Day, a Deadly Shipwreck, and the Human Cost of the Refugee Crisis
- By: Jeanne Carstensen
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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On October 28, 2015, a boat meant for only a few dozen passengers capsized off the coast of the Greek island of Lesvos. Hundreds of refugees, forced in desperation onto the overloaded boat manned by armed smugglers, were tossed into a roiling sea. The resulting loss of life, the largest in a single day during the crisis in the Aegean, shocked the world. Now, after nearly a decade of research, interviews, and investigation, reporter Jeanne Carstensen has captured every detail of the dramatic twenty-four hours.
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Why there is a need to prepare for rare emergencies in ports throughout the world.
- By Amazon Customer on 03-31-25
Jane kicks arse
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Fascinating Topic
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Insightful and balanced
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Depth
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Essential listening for anyone interested in understanding America’s past and present
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