Spencer Schneider

1.75 stars. interesting in that we get to see a bit more about the inner workings of a (much less violent and scary, thankfully) cult. i'm not sure it lives up to the subtitle, at all, though. not that i needed it to, i just don't think it feels like it had much to do with any of that. this was more about the day to day living with someone controlling you and manipulating you. and he doesn't really tell us much about how he changed his mind to get out. Or if he was still able to have a relationship with his son after he left. it's interesting, because mind control and these people who manage to brainwash hundreds of people to do their bidding is just so wild to me. but this book doesn't make me understand any of them any better.… (plus d'informations)

I love stories about cults. It's just such a fascinating thing how smart people get caught up in groups without really figuring out that they're being taken advantage of and manipulated. The more in depth the discussion, the better. I want all the details about the charismatic leaders and what the members thought their own purposes were and the harrowing escape!

Unfortunately, Manhattan Cult Story didn't deliver those things. I found it very superficial and unengaging. By halfway through, I just wanted it to be over because I didn't care anymore. I felt no connection to the author at all. There are so many great books about cults that I'd recommend skipping this one and finding another.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for giving me a copy of the audiobook.… (plus d'informations)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: “We were invisible. We had to be. We took an oath of absolute secrecy. We never even told our immediate families who we were. We went about our lives in New York City. Just like you. We were your accountants, money managers, lawyers, executive recruiters, doctors. We owned your child’s private school and sold you your brownstone. But you’d never guess our secret lives, how we lived in a kind of silent terror and fervor. There were hundreds of us.”

Right under the noses of neighbors, clients, spouses, children, and friends, a secret society, simply called School—a cult of snared Manhattan professionals—has been led by the charismatic, sociopathic and dangerous leader Sharon Gans for decades. Spencer Schneider was recruited in the eighties and he stayed for more than twenty-three years as his life disintegrated, his self-esteem eroded, and he lined the pockets of Gans and her cult.

Cult members met twice weekly, though they never acknowledged one another outside of meetings or gatherings. In the name of inner development, they endured the horrors of mental, sexual, and physical abuse, forced labor, arranged marriages, swindled inheritances and savings, and systematic terrorizing. Some of them broke the law. All for Gans.

“During those years,” Schneider writes, “my world was School. That’s what it’s like when you’re in a cult, even one that preys on and caters to New York’s educated elite. This is my story of how I got entangled in School and how I got out.”

At its core, Manhattan Cult Story is a cautionary tale of how hundreds of well-educated, savvy, and prosperous New Yorkers became fervent followers of a brilliant but demented cult leader who posed as a teacher of ancient knowledge. It’s about double-lives, the power of group psychology, and how easy it is to be radicalized—all too relevant in today's atmosphere of conspiracy and ideologue worship.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm going to reproduce the author's "Nine Tell-Tale Signs You're in a Cult":

You give an inordinate amount of time and money to the group.

The group's ideology is strict, exacting, and unforgiving.

Your life is highly regulated by the group.

You cannot challenge the leaders or the ideology—their word is final.

The leaders will punish you for breaking the rules of the group.

Former members are ostracized and denigrated.

The group isolates you from your friends and family.

The group discourages you from thinking for yourself.

You are afraid to leave the group.

I was tense and uneasy as I read this book...I know lots of people like the author from my years living in Manhattan. It could easily be any one of them, any one!, who tells this awful, painful story. I don't think I know the author, though honestly it doesn't matter, the poor guy's been through so much and in service of so little.

His cult experience reminded me of my mentally ill mother's tactics and techniques for controlling others. I don't see that as a nurturing thing, though I suppose I can see why someone who felt...unmoored...would see it as such. It's a cruel world out there, and to be told...convinced...that the cruelty you're experiencing is actually lovingkindness replicated religious nuts' favorite tactic of "love, it's all done from love"...just not for you, vile sinner, but for the little animatronic cultist they are trying to free you to become! (I think they actually have the balls to call it "your best self.")

So his decades of serving the whims and needs of capricious, demanding, judgmental Others are a bitter recapitulation of the way my experience of christian and jewish religious nuts tried to grab hold of me in my youth. It was a chilling, dreadful reminder of how easy it is for others who have Othered you to convince you to give up the real, authentic you and submit to them and their warped, perverted will.

That said, the author's clearly got something to say about how he feels vis-a-vis gay people. No mention ever comes without his vigorous denial that he's gay. Okay, so...why bring it up? It kinda-sorta goes along with my main dissatisfaction with the read as a read. It feels scattershot. It takes time to explain a life, and I think that time was laser focused on the axe he quite genuinely and necessarily grinds against Sharon Gans and her vile School. It left me feeling like I was looking at the hole where that guy had been, not the guy who'd climbed out of said hole.

It's #Spooktober. Read something factual...and still truly, inescapably, chilling and horrifying.… (plus d'informations)