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This book profiles 10 cults. Four are widely known in the US: those led by Charles Manson, Jim Jones, David Koresh and Marshall Applewhite. A fifth US cult, not as well known as the others, NXIVM, was a financial ponzi scheme along the the cult features of enslaving and raping its members. Cults profiled that operated in Mexico, France, India (this one expanded to the US), Canada and Uganda demonstrate that this is a human phenomena and not a product of one culture or another.

For each of the cults, even those I knew something about, I learned something new. In the Manson group, it was where the participants are today; for Jim Jones it was his childhood, for Koresh it was the religious structure his group was a “branch� of and for Applewhite, the strange way his cult formed, lived and grew.

Of the cults for which I knew nothing - I was happier before I learned of them.

Three of these cults destroyed themselves. One petered out. Five, in response to clear murder and rape offenses, were ended by law enforcement. Only the Branch Davidians survives today; however, it appears to be in its original religious structure, not in the perverse direction Koresh took it.

There is little analysis here� mostly reporting.