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A review by boneloose
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
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!
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!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Suicide
Moderate: Fatphobia, Gaslighting, Sexual assault, Pedophilia, and Trafficking