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

3.0

Wasn't a bad book, but it felt cursory in its analysis. I think the book raised some interesting questions and made a good point that a cult is more of a spectrum than binary, but those were mostly raised in the beginning of the book. I wish the book had explored the psychology of cults more, or that there had been a more rigorous analysis of language patterns used to induce people into agreeing/following more. However, I'm very interested in both sociolinguistics and psychology more generally, so I probably wanted her to go deeper than the average reader would care. Probably the book could have been shortened by half and I'd have gotten as much out of it. Still, wasn't a bad read, just didn't feel meaty enough.