Destroying the world to save it

Description

"With unusual access to former Aum members, Lifton has produced a study of the inner life of a modern millennial cult, offering a subtle portrait of how guru and disciples reinforce each other's wildest destructive fantasies. Lifton offers a sobering exploration of how Aum's guru, Shoko Asahara - charismatic leader, con man, madman - created a religion from a global stew of New Age thinking, ancient religious practices, and apocalyptic science fiction; of how he recruited scientists as disciples and set them to producing the "poor man's atomic bomb" (chemical and biological weapons). Through Aum, Lifton explores a historically unprecedented phenomenon, a twenty-first century in which cults and terrorists may be able to create their own holocausts."--BOOK JACKET. "Taking stock as well of Charles Manson, the Heaven's Gate cult, and the Oklahoma City bombers, Lifton argues that Aum Shinrikyo was not just a "nightmare of Japanese religion," but a global nightmare that revealed a world unexpectedly at risk."--BOOK JACKET.

First Sentence

One can look at the guru of a fanatical new religion or cult as either everything or nothing.

Excerpt

One can look at the guru of a fanatical new religion or cult as either everything or nothing.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Destroying the world to save it: Aum Shinrikyō, apocalyptic violence, and the the new global terrorismHenry Holt and Co.1999-01-01
• Destroying the World to Save ItHardcoverMetropolitan Books1999-10-21
• Destroying the World to Save ItPaperbackOwl Books2000-09-01