During Thanksgiving vacation of her freshman year at Swarthmore College (1977), Elizabeth, at her mother's insistence, attended a "stress-reduction" session with a biofeedback technician on staff at a Manhattan psychologist's office. During that first visit, this man filled her ears with prophetic visions of a glorious future--the inheritance of those fortunate few who might choose to accompany him. His confidence and charisma entranced her, and she soon recruited two of her college roommates. When the psychologist fired his assistant two years later, Elizabeth and her mother followed. Over the next decade, this man, a malevolent genius and master of manipulating metaphysical concepts to benefit a self-serving agenda, organized a small, dedicated band of followers. "The Group" evolved into an incestuous family--a cult. Their brainwashed minds became fused with a distinctive, New Age doctrine. A coterie of spiritual "Navy Seals", they scrambled in terror, training to survive the inevitable cataclysm--one man's divine vision of Armageddon. Subsequent to a momentous event in August 1994, with the guru as high priest, "The Black Dog Religion" was born. Elizabeth sank into a pit of despair, darker than she ever could have imagined was possible. From the adolescent gullibility which seduced her astray, to the enlightenment which led her to freedom, you will travel an incredible journey. For anyone who has ever been trapped by a person who would not let them go, within this book lies a message of hope.

Seventeen year-old Jesse Walters made a decision that was going to change his life forever. It began as some of the happiest days of his life with love, romance, peace, faith and a true sense of fulfillment in life. But as time passed it led to guilt, anxiety, stress, distancing himself from family and friends, and losing all sense of satisfaction in his daily life. During this time he joined a local church, found his way to God, and developed a close relationship with a group of Christians to such an extent that he could call them "family." Dedicating one's life to Jesus Christ and experiencing an extreme state of depression? Those two statements shouldn't go together. Jesse joined a cult without realizing it. The dramatic and heartbreaking events that took place led him to push his family and friends out of his life. His family had to go to the extreme of locking him in a building for five days with a cult expert for an intervention that proved he had been living a lie. This book is the start of his mission to 1. Shine light on the massive, unrecognized issue of Christianity and other troubling organizations. 2. Prove that anyone can have a healthy relationship with God without having to make extreme sacrifices, and 3. Help people get themselves or loved ones out of cults.

Named one of Vulture’s Top 10 Best Books of 2020! Leftist firebrand Fredrik deBoer exposes the lie at the heart of our educational system and demands top-to-bottom reform. Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: Academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability. Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that hierarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place. This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.

The house next door to the Kennedys appears to be haunted by an all-pervasive evil, and the couple watches as a succession of owners becomes engulfed by the sinister force, until the Kennedys set out to destroy the house themselves.

'I was the shadow child no one ever saw...' From the day she was born until she escaped aged 30, Katy Morgan-Davies knew nothing but a life in captivity. Her father was the deluded and cruel leader of a cult based in South London who brainwashed those around him. Her father's paranoia and his need to completely control others led to Katy being imprisoned indoors and denied any kind of love or friendship. From a young age, Katy's father subjected her to violence and mental abuse. She was not permitted contact with anyone outside the house and on the rare occasions she did have to go out, she was always chaperoned. Katy never gave up hope of one day breaking free from her father's cruel clutches and finally found her freedom. This is her true story of endurance and survival.

Evil is a problem that will not go away. For some it is an inescapable fact of the human condition. For others "evil" is a term that should only be used to name the most horrible of crimes. Still others think that the worst problem lies with the abuse of the term: using it to vilify a misunderstood enemy. No matter how we approach it, "evil" is a concept that continues to call out for critical reflection. This volume collects the results of a two-year deliberation within the Boston University Institute for Philosophy of Religion lecture series, bringing together scholars of religion, literature, and philosophy. Its essays provide a thoughtful, sensitive, and wide-ranging consideration of this challenging problem-and of ways that we might be delivered from it.

Traces the author's coming-of-age in an exclusive white California suburb in the 1970s and 1980s, describing the prejudices that minimized her family's achievements and her struggles to define herself as "the black girl next door" in light of her parents' dreams.