Bücher von Carole M. Cusack

Investigates four religious movements founded in the West which are intentionally fictional: Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, the Church of the Sub-Genius, and Jediism. This book explores these groups as reactions against the religious marketplace of the 1950s and 1960s.

The label 'Suicide Cults' has been applied to a wide variety of different alternative religions, from Jonestown to the Solar Temple to Heaven's Gate. Additionally, observers have asked if such group suicides are in any way comparable to Islamist suicide terrorism, or to historical incidents of mass suicide.

The mutual imbrication of the profane and sacred worlds in anime, along with the profound reciprocal relationship between 'Eastern' (Japanese) and 'Western' (chiefly American) culture in the development of the anime artistic form, form the twin narrative arcs of the book.