Reviews tagging 'Trafficking'

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

21 reviews

sholtie's review against another edition

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funny informative medium-paced

5.0

 Not capitalism exploiting our basic human desire for community.... damn 

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stardustdreamer's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

4.5


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amandamethot's review

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informative fast-paced

3.0


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alsoapples's review

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dark funny informative fast-paced

4.5


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orchidd's review against another edition

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informative fast-paced

3.5


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butlerebecca's review against another edition

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funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.0


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librarymouse's review

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emotional informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

Well written and engaging, the narrator's voice is conversational while giving factual information and leaving space for herself to reflect on what she's learned. Amanda Montell comes at this information from an interesting perspective, being the child of a father who was raised in and resisted a cult before escaping as a teenager. The content centered around religion, belief systems, and process 1 and 2 thinking specifically really interested me. As a former catholic, I always thought that I was just a very cynical child because I didn't quite mesh with the religion in a way I thought my peers could. The author's explanation of prayer as perceiving one's own post-prayer thoughts as answers from God really put how I've relied on process 2 thought in religious spaces into perspective. This is a book that begs reflection from readers, but doesn't condemn piety or belief in any form it may take so long as it doesn't cause harm.

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twilightfan420's review

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funny informative medium-paced

4.0

This book rocks. I love the blend of personal anecdotes with interview-reporting and sociological research. It reads seamlessly and offers such a new take on cults. As a writer myself, I can’t believe I hadn’t looked into language like this before! Thank you Amanda Montell for making me do so. 

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boneloose's review

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informative reflective fast-paced

4.5

This book's writing was incredible. Paced perfectly, read in a conversational way that didn't feel informal at all, with descriptions contextualizing interviewees that could have been lifted from a fiction novel. Amanda Montell spun her myriad sources (30 page bibliography!) together in a way that made it read like a cohesive narrative. It was objectively packed with information yet never felt dense or overloaded at any point.

I personally went into it thinking it'd be much more of a linguistic focus (which... the title IS Cultish, of course it's primarily about cults) and wished there would have been more of a deep dive into linguistic theory as it pertains to cultish language (for example, I would have loved to see a thorough look into how the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis plays into language manipulation rather than just briefly mentioning it), but I'm not going to knock a star off an objectively incredible book because I had intially misunderstood what it was aiming to do. 

Highly recommend broadly, but especially to people who think they hate nonfiction, because the writing style makes it much easier to transition into!

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tender_onion's review

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dark informative mysterious fast-paced

5.0


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