Literary Cocktail Hour
The Literary Cocktail Hour is a fun, informal monthly event featuring a pair (or more) of speakers in an entertaining, illuminating virtual event based on the notion of a cocktail hour.
Online and free!
The Festival will host Jane Borden with Stephanie Greene discussing Jane’s book Cults Like Us on Friday, March 13, 2026 for a virtual cocktail hour at 5:00pm (EST). The event is FREE and open to the public.
Long listed for a Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, this colorful and enlightening pop history explains why the eccentric doomsday beliefs of our Puritan founders still drive American culture today, contextualizes the current rise in division and extremism as a natural result of our latent indoctrination, and proposes the United States is the largest cult of all.
Since the Mayflower sidled up near Plymouth Rock, cult ideology has been ingrained in the DNA of the United States. In this eye-opening book, journalist Jane Borden argues that Puritan doomsday belief never went away; it just went secular and became American culture. From our fascination with cowboys and superheroes to our allegiance to influencers and self-help, susceptibility to advertising, and undying devotion to the almighty dollar, Americans remain particularly vulnerable to a specific brand of cult-like thinking.
With in-depth research and compelling insight, Borden uncovers the American history you didn’t learn in school, including how we are still being brainwashed, making us a nation of easy marks for con artists and strong men. Along the way, she also revisits some of the most infamous cults in this country—including, the Branch Davidians and Love Has Won, presenting them—as integral parts of our national psyche rather than as aberrations.
Jane Borden contributes regularly to Vanity Fair, and has written for the New York Times Magazine and The Washington Post, among other outlets. Her book Cults Like US: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America was published in March 2025 by One Signal Publishers. Her first book, I Totally Meant to Do That, was published by Crown. Before all of that, she was a culture editor at Time Out New York. She is also a professional editor, book coach, and ghost writer. Jane lives in Los Angeles.
