The Cult at the End of the World: The Terrifying Story of the Aum Doomsday Cult, from the Subways of Tokyo to the Nuclear Arsenals of Russia

By David E. Kaplan and Andrew Marshall

Book Overview

The brave new age of postmillennium terror is awakening and its harbinger is Aum Supreme Truth: a Japan-based global web of wired, technically expert New Age zealots armed with biologial weapons, driven by an apocalyptic vision of unprecedented destruction. With compelling immediacy, this book tells the terrifying story the cult reponsible for the Tokyo subway nerve gas attack, offering a revealing profile of its founder and leader, Shoko Asahara.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0517705435
• ISBN13: 9780517705438
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 310 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Captivating

David Kaplan and Andrew Marshall obviously have an amazing amount of knowledge to share when it comes to the underworlds of Japan. In this book, they do an outstanding job of telling the true story of AUM. Whether you like fiction or non-fiction, you will be capitivated by the story of this Doomsday cult. I give it 5 stars on a 5-star scale.

very interesting

Like all of the other people who read this book, I had to keep on reminding myself that it was real and a lot of people did actually have these thoughts and intentions. The thing that really got me was how recent it all was, I'm 17 and I'm so used to everything like that being ages ago - world war 2 for example. After I had read the book I realised that it was only written in 1996 so I searched to find some recent news on them only to find that Shoko Asahara's trial is still going, the cult have relaunched themselves and they even have their own website. They managed to do all what they did 10 years ago, technology has moved on a lot since then and I dread to think what they are capable of now. If you do buy this book, I would recommend you read the last few pages carefully, its like reading the terrorist forecast of New York, very scary and yet very true.

I can sum this book up in two words - totally unbelievable!

If this story was to be written as a novel, the only suitable genre would be science fiction, for that is how amazing, otherworldly and fantastical this tale is. The authors leave no stone unturned in this extensively researched missive about a group of inhumane terrorists masquerading as harmless members of a Buddhist cult. After devouring this book (since that is what I did) one will probably realise that as dangerous as Jim Jones and David Koresh were, compared to Asahara and his league of demented adherents, they were Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny combined into one entity! Kaplan and Marshall inform us that we can no longer afford to exist in a Philistine society - we must do everything in our power to rid the world of impious religious cults where man is worshipped instead of God, and they draw much needed attention to a very frightening, yet little known fact - that with the advent of highly sophisticated firearms and biological weapons, which are inexplicably becoming more and more accessible to lay people, if World War Three does occur, it is most likely to be started by a group of terrorists similar to the fanatical Aum Supreme truth religious cult - people who say they worship all life and this planet, then spend millions of dollars in an attempt to destroy it.

An important and impressive book

I lived in Japan when the subway attack happened and I will never forget the reaction from the Japanese people: they were terrified! When this book came out, I bought it immediately, expecting the usual quality level of non-fiction books that hit the stands soon after an event. Boy, was I surprised: This is an excellent, excellent read. No exagerations, so sensationalism, but still both fast-paced and revealing. As a reader of Japanese newspapers I had a fairly good picture of what had happened before, but this book gave me so much more background. As another reader commented, the scary thing is that the authorities did nothing, not wanting to "rock the boat".

Scary stuff

The most scary in this book is that the japanese law enforcement had information about AUM years before the subway gassing happened, but they never did anything, even when people were kidnapped and murdered. Sadly, today US law enforcement has a similar attitude, and we'll certainly see many more Jonestown "religious events" before the year 2000. What is even more sad is that the usual cult apologists now claim that the leader Shoko Asahara didn't know what was going on and that he was fooled by fanatic followers. This book shows that Asahara not only approved the crimes, but that he ordered them.