Books Like Helter Skelter and Going Clear
August 25, 2015 9:33 PM   Subscribe

Pretty self-explanatory, but I'll go into a bit more detail under the cut.

I realized that Helter Skelter (about the Charles Manson murders) and Going Clear (about Scientology, were two of the most satisfying books I read last year, and I'm looking for more to scratch that itch.

They're both thick books that go deep into the workings of a fucked up cult and wind up saying a whole lot about the culture as a whole. I also love that they're both about L.A. I'd really love a great (not just run-of-the-mill true crime) book about Heaven's Gate or the People's Temple - I've got Shiva Paul's Journey to Nowhere on order from Amazon, but haven't started it yet.

That said, I'd love any recommendation, no matter how far afield, by someone who says, 'Yeah, I've read both those books, and I can't quite say why, but your question made me think of X,' even if it's not ostensibly about cults or if it's fiction. That would probably be more useful than a list of, say, memoirs from cult survivors or literary novels about communes in the 60s, which would probably touch on the same subject matter but don't have the same dark, expansive feel.

I've already read Under the Banner of Heaven. Listening to the Charles Manson series on the You Must Remember This podcast right now and loving it.

Thanks, friends!
posted by pretentious illiterate to Media & Arts (42 answers total) 92 users marked this as a favorite
 
"The Zen Predator of the East Side" is basically a long-form magazine article revised (?) for Kindle, but it sounds like you might like it.
posted by No-sword at 9:42 PM on August 25, 2015


Have you read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote?
posted by littlewater at 9:47 PM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


Best answer: Not cult-y, but I like the same type of stuff you do and totally devoured Outrage: The Five Reasons OJ Simpson Got Away with Murder (also by Vincent Bugliosi, the guy who wrote Helter Skelter, and has the LA angle you're looking for).
posted by lovableiago at 9:53 PM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


Best answer: I am going with a "this just kinda of reminds me of..." suggestion. Laurel Canyon which is a great history of that part of Los Angeles and includes a different view of The Manson Family and brushes on the Wonderland murders, it's mostly about music though.
posted by Duffington at 10:08 PM on August 25, 2015


So I saw the "Going Clear" documentary rather than reading the book, and I think I just saw some weird tv-docudrama based on "Helter Skelter," but both things resonated with me and two literary non-fiction things leap to mind:

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
posted by jaguar at 10:18 PM on August 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


Best answer: Season of the Witch, by David Talbot, specifically for the part about Jim Jones and the Peoples' Temple and their influence in San Francisco politics.
posted by gingerbeer at 10:20 PM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Best answer: I think you would like Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick. It is one of the best non-fiction books I've read and it's completely absorbing. It tells the stories of six different people who escaped from North Korea--who grew up there thinking the totalitarian, cultlike regime of Kim Jong-Il was normal, and then slowly but surely started to feel there was something not right.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:23 PM on August 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


Best answer: Have a look at Remembering Satan by Lawrence Wright. Very dark and gripping, and a great snapshot of a particular disturbing period in American popular culture.
posted by holborne at 10:35 PM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


agree on "The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America". Such a well written and page turning book! I learned about murders AND the Worlds Fair!
posted by right_then at 11:05 PM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Best answer: I read and enjoyed Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People as an example for the People's Temple. There's a lot of primary evidence from the time available so there's a pretty chilling story to be told and it definitely fits with Helter Skelter - which I also read around the same time.
posted by shelleycat at 11:50 PM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


From the "it reminded me of" angle, it's not a book (because I couldn't find any) but filthy light thief made an epic (of course) FPP about Murphy Ranch and that's probably even better than a book.
posted by Room 641-A at 12:01 AM on August 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


Not about a cult, but Dave Cullen's Columbine is intelligent true crime that has a lot to say about American society.
posted by thetortoise at 12:02 AM on August 26, 2015 [9 favorites]


David Greason's I was a teenage Fascist is a very strange coming of age memoir about a suburban Australian kid who got into and then out of a series of far-right groups and neo-Nazi parties. It is about the racist Right, but it's much more about how a lonely kid gets emotionally enmeshed in what these kinds of groups had to offer in the 1970s and 1980s.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 12:32 AM on August 26, 2015


I don't know if you have gotten into Jon Ronson's stuff but but I devour every one of his books as soon as they come out - essays on his own personal experiences and investigations into cults and fringe groups and conspiracy theorists. Much recommend for Them and The Psychopath Test, in particular.

(Bonus audio: all his "This American Life" and "Jon Ronson On..." bits are here.)
posted by Merinda at 12:51 AM on August 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


One more vote for Devil in the White City. So good.
posted by janet lynn at 2:41 AM on August 26, 2015


You might enjoy Peter Pomerantsev's Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, which is a memoir of a guy who worked in Russian reality TV in the 2000s and early 2010s. A large portion of it deals with a bizarre Est-like encounter-group/cult called Rose of the World, and the whole book has a through-the-looking-glass feeling to it.

I was also going to mention Jon Ronson's Them, although I read it recently and it feels weirdly quaint in 2015.
posted by theodolite at 2:53 AM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


Serpentine by Thomas Thompson, about the cultish, murderous group led by Charles Sobraj in Asia in the 70s. Not a great book as far as it goes, but still a gripping story.
posted by goo at 4:00 AM on August 26, 2015


Nthing Devil in the White City.

You also might check out The Professor and the Madman - it's a history of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary and it has some unexpected turns - highly recommended.
posted by parki at 4:01 AM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


You might enjoy "Let Me Take You Down" - the biography of Mark David Chapman, and what drove him to murder John Lennon. It is well written and definitely goes deep into what drives a fanatical mind.
posted by Flood at 5:15 AM on August 26, 2015


People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry
posted by janey47 at 5:38 AM on August 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer is excellent and right up your alley (though not set in LA).

His other books are great as well. Although not as obviously "culty" they do still reflect elements of groupthink and how people react in extreme situations. Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, and Missoula.
posted by The Deej at 6:25 AM on August 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Martha Beck's Leaving the Saints was pretty interesting.
posted by rpfields at 6:42 AM on August 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


What about A Wilderness of Error, by Errol Morris?

I'll also nth "Devil in the White City". I just recommended that book to a friend yesterday.
posted by lakersfan1222 at 7:07 AM on August 26, 2015




Haruki Murakami's Underground is a series of interviews of victims/witnesses/participants in the 1995 sarin attacks on the Tokyo subway system, that ends up covering a lot of other ground.
posted by gnomeloaf at 7:11 AM on August 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Best answer: They're both thick books that go deep into the workings of a fucked up cult and wind up saying a whole lot about the culture as a whole. I also love that they're both about L.A.

I highly recommend Vin McLellan and Paul Avery's The Voices of Guns, which is probably the best book available about the Symbionese Liberation Army. It's long out of print, but there are inexpensive used copies out there.

Ed Sanders' The Family is another investigation of the Manson murders, but from the perspective of a high-profile member of the counterculture. Jeff Guinn's recent biography of Manson is also excellent.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:32 AM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


Going on another track, you might like The Last Place on Earth, by Roland Huntford, which delves deeply into the culture and organization of two expeditions to the South Pole (one that failed and one that succeeded) and illuminates some interesting things about English culture in the early 20th century.

You might also like Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities. It's a bit more light weight than a lot of the books people are recommending, but is a really interesting look at a somewhat closed group.
posted by OrangeDisk at 7:37 AM on August 26, 2015


Should have added:

If you're interested in Jim Jones, the PBS documentary "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple" is essential. It's the best and most concise exploration I've seen of the life of the Peoples Temple before California, and of Jones's rise to political power after they arrived there. More than anything else I've read or seen about Jonestown, it makes what happened explicable, if not predictable.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:41 AM on August 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


A few things:
posted by Going To Maine at 7:46 AM on August 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


I want to second thetortoise's recommendation for Dave Cullen's "Columbine." That's a great book, and not incidentally, will tell you that nearly everything you know about Columbine is wrong.
posted by holborne at 9:18 AM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Oh man, you guys, I might just have to quit everything and read nothing but these suggestions for the next three months.

I've read and adored a lot of these already - for those who come after me, "Columbine," [YES] "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down," "Underground," "A Wilderness of Error," "People Who Eat Darkness" [DOUBLE YASS], "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" and "Devil in the White City" are all amazing if you like dark, expansive nonfiction books.

I'm best-answering the ones that seem to have landed at right where I was aiming for, but I'll probably check most of them out and I'll report back if there are any major unexpected successes. Special shoutout to loveableiago - I've been looking for a good OJ book for a while, and it didn't even occur to me to mention it in this question.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 9:39 AM on August 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Diving into my bookcase - both are pretty old and it's been years since I last read them, but anyway:

'L. Ron Hubbard - Messiah or Madman' by Brent Corydon and l. Ron Hubbard, Jr. a.k.a. Ronald De Wolf, and
'The faith healers' by James Randi.

Randi mostly deals with debunking the paranormal but he does go into the communities that arise around supposedly paranormal phenomena.
posted by rjs at 11:21 AM on August 26, 2015


Also definitely recommended: Stefan Aust, ' The Baader Meinhof complex', both the book (which I assume is available in English) and the movie.
posted by rjs at 11:27 AM on August 26, 2015


I am the world's biggest fan of Jess Walter, who began his career with two true crime books, one about Ruby Ridge and one kind of ugh one about OJ ghostwritten for Darden. Skip the second one but I dare you to read the Ruby Ridge one and not come away questioning the received wisdom about that shitshow.
posted by janey47 at 11:41 AM on August 26, 2015


This may be from a weird angle, but Gun Guys by Dan Baum really scratches the same itch for me. The gun culture in America is very cultish and Baum's leftist take on it (exploration of it) reveals a lot about our country.
posted by Seamus at 11:43 AM on August 26, 2015


I would recommend any of the annual Best American Crime (Reporting) Writing series (2002 to 2010, 2009 linked).

For my blog, I've put together links to all of the pieces that are available online (about two-thirds of them). I'm thinking of transcribing my links to the blue, sometime soon.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:57 PM on August 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


Totally yes to Devil in the White City.

Bugliosi wrote another compelling true crime novel, And the Sea Will Tell, though it has a much smaller cast of characters.

The other thing I thought of is fiction, and that's Anne Rice's The Witching Hour, the history of the Mayfair witches. Totally creeps me out, can't put it down, really thick book. (The subsequent books Lasher and Taltos, you can and should skip.)
posted by Glinn at 4:55 PM on August 26, 2015


Here's one about how Zen Buddhism came to the U.S. and underpinned lots of alternative culture (particularly in SF). The author is a devout Catholic, and brings respect and tenderness to this encounter with a fundamentally different worldview. Of course power corrupts, and the American chosen to be the head monk falls very far indeed.

The book explores how we make communities, how we choose leaders, why we stand by some and not others, set in the buzzing 60s through 80s. You don't need any particular interest in religion or doctrine to enjoy it.

Shoes Outside the Door:
Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center

Michael Downing (2001)
posted by Jesse the K at 6:47 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


You want to read THIS. I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned yet!

(As for the Source Family recommendations above, I found that the book is actually much more entertaining than the documentary.)
posted by ElectricGoat at 7:46 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


Oh my goodness ElectricGoat, my beau and I have been obsessed with all things Sabbath Assembly lately, and I can't wait to read that book! (Sabbath Assembly formed to play hymns of the Process Church; OP, you might enjoy that, too!)
posted by fiercecupcake at 9:52 AM on August 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Well everyone already mentioned the first thing I thought of, which was Devil in the White City. I heard they're making a movie. In my opinion, there's no way that a film can reproduce the thrill that was reading that book, but I hope I'm proven wrong.

Regarding Outrage, I've also been looking for a good OJ Simpson book (or documentary or podcast). In particular, I'd really like to read (or hear) an expert's opinion on what really happened. That and the murder of JonBenet Ramsay still keep me up at night.
posted by Groovymomma at 11:48 AM on August 28, 2015


Well just following up on my post from Friday, I went ahead and bought Outrage, and boy...you really need to read this book if you have any doubts about those murders. I feel like a fool now, and incredibly angry, but I'm so glad I decided to read it.
posted by Groovymomma at 11:40 AM on August 30, 2015


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