Ruth Carter spent 15 years as an Amway distributor. During most of that time she was completely immersed in her upline's Motivational Organization. She also spent nearly five years working for her upline Diamond in his office. Only then did she witness the trickery, deception, and unethical behavior that pervades the Amway Motivational Organizations, or AMOs. This book reveals the truth behind the smoke and mirrors of the Amway motivational business.

A former cult member, now a counselor helping those affected by destructive cults, Hassan exposes the troubling facts about cults' recruitment, their use of psychological manipulation, and their often subtle influence on government, the legal system, and society as a whole.

Everyone knows that they are too smart to ever get sucked in by a cult, but when you look at the victims there are some smart people there who believed the words of conmen and liars. The difference with most conmen is they only take your money but the cults can take your family, your sanity and your life.

It is bad enough that charlatans hawk untested medicines and techniques to sick people, but there seems to be something particularly evil about people who claim to have magic healing powers or who claim to be using powers delegated to them by God. At least some of the quack medicine salespeople believe in what they are doing.

False Profits provides an excellent discussion of the inherent fallacies and deceptions in any Multi-Level Marketing business. Fitzpatrick clearly makes the point that MLM is predicated on the failure of many.

The book that helped to win a battle! Edited by Lisa Appignanesi, the PEN/Penguin book with thought-provoking essays by Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Monica Ali, Hari Kunzru, Howard Jacobson, Helena Kennedy and many more was published on December 1 2005.

You might think the title of this book is a rhetorical question, but the criminal cult of Scientology is out there as a testament to Hubbard's madness so there are obviously still some people who can't work out the right answer for themselves. If you are unfamiliar with the cult, Operation Clambake is a good place to start.

Eric Scheibeler was a big pin in Amway and this book documents the way he and his wife were drawn into the cult by false promises, lies and psychological tricks - the same tactics used by all cults to gain control over members.