Communes And Cults

Rating:
Summary: Lacking real substance
Review: Kathlyn Gay's book Communes and Cults is a good place to start if you're just beginning to explore the difference between cults and communes. However, the book lacks any sort of clear thesis, and her personal experiences, rather than strengthening her book, instead detract, coloring her research with emotionalism. In addition, when she outlines some of the various cults she has researched, she often fails to touch upon some of the most crucial details: why the group was started, how it attracted its members, how its members or ex-members viewed the group, what happened when the group disintegrated. While she does include a few of these details, the book reads primarily as a broad cataloguing of communes and cults and their belief systems. This would have been a much more satisfying book had she explored more of the why and how aspects of these groups.