A review by gwenswoons
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

dark funny informative fast-paced

4.5

Really good! I am fascinated by cults for a whole host of reasons and I loved Amanda Montell’s way in to this topic, which felt both very personal and super academically grounded. The linguistics angle of it was particularly interesting to me — the analysis of language is just something I love so much, but I also struggle with non-fiction, and this oddly enough made me stay really engaged with it. I thought some of the writing here was a little clunky and repetitive (a lot of “we’ll get to that in chapter 4,” over and over) but the audio worked well and I liked both the historical elements and the tie-ins to modern cultish language. She’s an excellent writer and I would definitely recommend for anyone who finds this topic fascinating, as I do.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, Murder, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Classism