My favorite nonfiction books about cults, scams, and schemes

Going Clear is a wonderful 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.

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

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...

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

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.

In 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.

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.

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

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!

"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.

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.

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.

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.

No 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.

I 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.

It 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.

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.

I'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.

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