The author’s experience as a linguist melds well with her research into the psychological underpinnings of cultish language, including interviews with several cult survivors.

... savvy, enlightening.

An empathetic listener, Montell takes careful note of the empty words that cult members turn to for solace. Though written in punchy and fun prose style, Cultish is more than a fascinating guide to the workings of cults; it’s also an infuriating window into just how starved people have been made to feel for community and structures of collective care..

Montell...takes the reader on a brisk, chatty, and sympathetically even-handed (sometimes overly so) tour through the widely varied forms that cultishness can take, and the role that language plays in cults’ magnetic power.

Montell demystifies this twisty language into something readers will recognize, whether it’s being employed to manipulate or to motivate.

With the same verve demonstrated in her debut, Montell explores how language can manipulate masses of people in detrimental ways. Using accessible prose, the author discusses the varied definitions of the word cult, the dangers of universally demonizing its terminology, and its murky history as society’s relationship with spirituality has evolved.

... vivid.