Amanda Montell Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Amanda Montell is a published New York Times best0selling author, a linguist, and a podcaster who has won an iHeart Radio Award.

She is known for writing nonfiction books that include Wordslut, Cultish, and The Age of Magical Overthinking. The Age of Magical Overthinking did very well and was an instant Indie Bestseller and a New York Times Bestseller.

Her books have received many positive reviews and have been praised in publications and media outlets such as NPR, The Economist, The Atlantic, Kirkus Reviews, and more.

In addition, Sounds Like A Cult is her podcast and it was picked as the best podcast of 2022 by Marie Claire, Esquire, and Vulture. It also won a 2023 iHeart Radio Award in the category of best emerging podcasts. Magical Overthinkers is her newest podcast and it made its debut in May of 2024 and was on the top 10 society and culture podcasts in the United States for Apple and Spotify.

Her writing has also been published in places such as Esquire, The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar, and The New York Times. She has appeared as herself in series such as How to Become a Cult Leader on Netflix and True Believers on Vice TV. She has also been herself in The Rise and Fall of LuLaRoe, a guest on the podcast A Little Bit Culty, and a guest on Jameela Jamil’s podcast I Weigh with Jameela Jamil.

Amanda resides in Los Angeles and graduated from NYU with a degree in linguistics.

Amanda Montell was born on February 16, 1992 in Baltimore, Maryland. She came from a Jewish family and was even a student of Hebrew School when she was young. Her first book was Wordslut in 2019 and was received well, even being named one of the top books of May 2019 by Cosmopolitan, Popsugar, and Marie Claire.

Her second book Cultish also came out in 2021 and largely was received well. It was partially inspired by the story of her father who spent years as a teen in Synanon, a cult. The book was named a best book of 2021 by NPR and is in development for a television project. Her third book The Age of Magical Overthinking came out in 2024 and tries to explain how our actions can be warped by our cognitive biases.

Amanda has also been a beauty and features editor at Who What Wear and Byrdie. She came up with the web series The Dirty Word for Wifey, a now defunct platform.

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism is a popular book by Amanda Montell. The book was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award for best nonfiction book in 2021. This book dives into cult influence and its social science and how different cultish groups from SoulCycle to Scientology to Jonestown and gurus on social media are able to utilize language in its ultimate powerful form.

There are so many things about cults that makes them powerful, intriguing, frightening. Here Montell dives into analyzing why these groups are so fascinating to us, why people go down rabbit holes, and why people want to join extreme groups and stay in them. We also wonder whether it could happen to us, and the author asserts that it already has on some level.

The culture that we live in sometimes doesn’t have a good answer for cult influence questions. A lot of it can have to do with brainwashing, but the author puts forth that the answer is not related to anything having to do with mind control or even Kool-Aid. Amanda says that a lot of the ways that cults operate can come down to language and it can even influence us, those not yet inside these groups.

The author deploys a ton of research and stories that show how cultish groups can pull in followers but can even be in places that we wouldn’t expect, such as on Instagram, in Peloton, in start-ups. Absorb all of the information and go for the ride by picking up a copy of Amanda Montell’s fascinating book!

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality is another compelling nonfiction book from Amanda Montell. If you have read her other work and loved it then you are definitely going to want to check this book out.

From cultural criticism to the personal narrative that looks into the cognitive biases that we have and what magical thinking can do for us as well as take away from us through being utilized. Montell once again turns her focus to how the human mind works as well as how it is biased in one of her most interesting works to come out yet.

Magical thinking is how one’s internal thoughts are able to have an effect on events that are unrelated in the external. It could be something like the belief that one can keep away cancer using positive vibrations. Or it might be that someone can manifest getting out of poverty. Or maybe if they are able to can peaches they can stave off the apocalypse.

Magical thinking can help you to feel in control and able to do things when things are chaotic. The author puts forth the argument that in the age of information our brains deal with a lot of stimulus and they’ve been overloaded so much that irrationality has somehow been turned up all the way to eleven.

Montell brings the author on an interesting journey and chapter by chapter shows all of the different cognitive biases that can affect our brains. It can be everything from how the Halo Effect inspires worship or strong negative feelings about celebrities, how Sunk Cost Fallacy can allow us to stay in relationships even though we know they’re not helpful, and more.

Smart and witty, the message is one of acceptance for ourselves and how human we truly are. If you think that humans have no ability to reason, the author shows that all hope is not lost. Check out this book for yourself to learn something and have fun doing it!