The Goodbye Man

Author’s Note

Cults and cult-like organizations — of which there are presently tens of thousands active in America — have been the subject of voluminous books, articles and documentaries over the years. Here are a sampling of titles from some of the sources I found helpful in researching The Goodbye Man, if you’re interested in further reading:

American Messiahs by Adam Morris;

Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church by Lauren Drain;

Born into the Children of God: My Life in a Religious Sex Cult and My Struggle for Survival on the Outside by Natacha Tormey;

Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult by Jayanti Tamm;

Daughter of the Saints: Growing Up in Polygamy by Dorothy Allred Solomon;

Girl at the End of the World: My Escape from Fundamentalism in Search of Faith with a Future by Elizabeth Esther;

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright;

Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion by Benjamin E. Zeller;

In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Family by Nansook Hong;

A Journey to Waco: Autobiography of a Branch Davidian by Clive Doyle, with Catherine Wessinger and Matthew D. Wittmer;

Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn;

Prophet’s Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints by Sam Brower;

Radical: My Journey out of Islamic Extremism by Maajid Nawaz;

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn;

Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me by Ron Miscavige;

Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of Life and Death in the People’s Temple by Deborah Layton;

Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist’s Wife by Irene Spencer;

The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir by Ruth Wariner;

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up In a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs by Elissa Wall with Lisa Pulitzer;

Stories from Jonestown by Leigh Fondakowski;

A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown by Julia Scheeres;

Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini;

Massacre at Waco: The Shocking True Story of Cult Leader David Koresh and the Branch Davidians by Clifford L. Linedecker;

The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology Tried to Destroy Paulette Cooper by Tony Ortega;

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer;

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche by Haruki Murakami;

The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult by Jerald Walker.