In California, recently, 39 identically dressed men and women, members of an obscure cult, were found dead in a mass suicide. These cultists, many well educated, left behind videotapes discussing their belief that they were angels who, by following the Hale-Bopp comet descending across the sky, would find their place in heaven.

Unfortunate people caught up in a destructive social movement have become a common phenomenon in recent American life. Elaine Showalter, Avalon Foundation Professor of English at Princeton University, seeks in Hystories, to explain the social and psychological forces compelling the strange behavior of those found in these dysfunctional social movements. Some of the groups she discusses are actual membership groups, such as cults, and still others are reference groups in which the afflicted may