My favorite nonfiction books about cults, scams, and schemes

If 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

No literature list on MLM scams can be complete without Bridget Read's meticulously researched 2025 book "Little Bosses Everywhere".

Highly recommend: Life 102 - What to do when your guru sues you

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_102

For a British view, I like "Spying In Guru Land" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2487851.Spying_in_Guru_L...

The podcast « Decoding the Gurus » covers the topic in an entertaining way: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-the-gurus/id1...

One 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.

The 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-BIT...

Underground, 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.

No 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.

My favorite read about cults is this short interview with Richard DeMille about Ron Hubbard: 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.

Cultish (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.

"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.

Never 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.

Interesting 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

I 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.

Not 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.

If 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.

Stripping 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.

If we are talking about scams an obvious one is Bad Blood, about the Theranos scam.

+1 to Cultish.

Another great one: The Confidence Game by Maria Konnikova.

Ok, now I want the fiction books about cults, scams and schemes.

This 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!

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a rollicking fun read

I 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.

The game "Cult of the Lamb" is a great way to learn about cults :)

I quite like The Cult of Trump due to the relevance to current events.

Looks 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.

I'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.

Highly recommend: Life 102 - What to do when your guru sues you

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_102

https://www.goodreads.com/series/76228-howdunit-series

No literature list on MLM scams can be complete without Bridget Read's meticulously researched 2025 book "Little Bosses Everywhere".

For a British view, I like "Spying In Guru Land" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2487851.Spying_in_Guru_L...

The podcast « Decoding the Gurus » covers the topic in an entertaining way: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-the-gurus/id1...

sound like you lead a cult called "MERLBE" make everyone read little bosses everywhere.

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-BIT...

> 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.

Apostasy is treated very severely by many (most?) religions. The cults have just borrowed that concept.

I always thought the below was much simpler:

1. love bombing

- make you feel welcome/loved/accepted

- lots of attention etc

2. isolation

- "you weren't appreciated before so why hang out with those people"

- "your family didn't understand you, but we do so stay with us"

3. control

- "we have your best interests at heart so you should do X"

- etc

> 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.

I agree, but I'd say a lot of the BITE attributes can be damaging regardless of whether or not the group rises to the level of cult. If your group is doing stuff in BITE you really should be questioning "why" and thinking about whether or not the group policing is actually good for you.

Another relevant rating scale that is pretty educational, in my opinion:

https://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html

Steven 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.