David Koresh Media Recommendations?

April 16, 2023 9:57 AM

I'm interested in learning more about David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and the FBI siege at Waco.

Books and articles are my favorite, but I'm open to video and podcasts too. I like both firsthand accounts and wider social/cultural analyses. Not especially into explicitly pro-LEO perspectives, but not deadset against them either. Thanks for your recommendations.

posted by box to Media & Arts (14 answers total)

Best answer: Waco: American Apocalypse (Netfix, trailer) is a pretty even-handed treatment of the siege. The Feds made many mistakes, but, damn, the Branch Davidians, even 30 years later, act like suicide bombers looking for a place to explode.
posted by SPrintF at 10:16 AM on April 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: The book Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage by Jeff Guin came out in January—I found it very interesting. I remember when Waco happened but this book made it clear that I misremembered a lot of the details.
posted by bookmammal at 10:19 AM on April 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Ask a Mortician did a good piece about the siege there called What the Waco Bodies Revealed About the Siege . She is fair and even handed as she goes in depth about it.
posted by googlebombed at 10:27 AM on April 16, 2023

Best answer: The excellent Wondery podcast "American Scandal" has a series of episodes on Waco (and another more recent one about Tim McVey and Oklahoma City, which is sadly related). The first of the Waco series was initially published on March 24, 2020.

Amazon owns Wondery now, and prime members can listen to these podcasts without ads over on Amazon Music.
posted by toxic at 11:12 AM on April 16, 2023

Best answer: American Scandal podcast did a Waco series that I felt was well done.
posted by mezzanayne at 11:13 AM on April 16, 2023

IIRC, there was a very bad TV movie about it starring Tim Daly. They were in such a rush to get it made that it was finished before the outcome was known, and it ends rather stupidly with some title cards.
posted by Melismata at 11:33 AM on April 16, 2023

Best answer: The Ashes of Waco provides a fair bit of history and theological context on the Branch Davidians. Waco: The Rules of Engagement remains the best documentary on the event.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 11:51 AM on April 16, 2023

Best answer: The newsletter Best Evidence covers the best true crime out there (and the worst), they have done a ton of Waco stuff.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 12:24 PM on April 16, 2023

Best answer: I can highly recommend the BBC Sounds podcast End of Days about David Koresh.
posted by fanlight at 1:55 PM on April 16, 2023

Best answer: I'm pretty much an extreme Malcolm Gladwell anti-fan, but this 2014 article is interesting and is in part about a book you may find useful.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/31/sacred-and-profane-4

There's a glimmer of the "I have applied a horseshit analytical lens to this and now have generalized a horseshit pop-psych concept from it in order to write another bestseller" thing that Gladwell trades in, but he keeps it to a merciful minimum.
posted by kensington314 at 3:00 PM on April 16, 2023

American Cult is a graphic novel anthology collecting stories of several American cults -- it sits somewhere between biography, documentary, & art, but it's a really compelling and interesting collection. The one about the Branch Davidians, “The Last Days of Mount Carmel” by Vreni Stollberger, is very good.
posted by rhiannonstone at 8:19 PM on April 16, 2023

Best answer: I found the recent Netflix documentary quite bad - hard to tell which footage was real or made for the show, constant rapid cutting between participants, constant dramatic music in the background. Still interesting - it couldn't not be - but infuriating.

I remember the mini series from a few years ago Waco: Madman or Messiah (on Wikipedia) being more thoughtful, and having more emphasis on Koresh and the place, not just the siege. Not sure if it's still available wherever you are. It's on Channel 4 in the UK.
posted by fabius at 5:21 AM on April 17, 2023

Best answer: I very much enjoyed the Cult Podcast series on the subject. Thoughtful, well-researched, but also with some humor interjected where appropriate because they're stand up comedians.
posted by OhHaieThere at 7:49 AM on April 17, 2023

Response by poster: Not to answer my own question, but I’ve recently read four books on the subject and Koresh: The True Story of David Koresh and the Tragedy at Waco is the best of the bunch.
posted by box at 4:54 PM on May 11, 2023