Title: Destroying the World to Save It
Subtitle: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism
First published: 1999
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.
Subjects: Oumu Shinrikyō (Religious organization), Cults, Terrorism, Apocalyptic literature, Violence, religious aspects, Terrorisme, Chemische wapens, Oumu Shinrikyo (Religious organization), New York Times reviewed, Oumu Shinrikyo? (Religious organization)
People: Shōkō Asahara
LC classification: BP 605 .O88 L54 1999