Sacred Suicide is a 2014 edited volume about suicide and religion, particularly as it relates to cults or new religious movements. It was published by Ashgate and edited by James R. Lewis and Carole M. Cusack, part of the Ashgate New Religions series. Other contributors to the book include Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Mattias Gardell, and Thomas Robbins. It is divided into five sections. The book covers various aspects of suicide as they relate to religion, including high profile "suicide cults" like Heaven's Gate, the Solar Temple, and the Peoples Temple, as well as historical mass suicides like that of the siege of Masada and the Old Believers. It also covers groups that have faced more dubious allegations of being suicide cults, such as the Branch Davidians and the Falun Gong. Further topics discussed include religious terrorism, and the depiction of suicide and religion in the media. It received a largely positive reception, with praise for the content of many of its essays; the chapter on the Peoples Temple and its coverage of the contemporary movements was singled out for praise. It was highly recommended by several reviewers, though others criticized it for not providing a proper analytical structure in the volume as a whole. The appropriateness of the cover, which depicts a person self-immolating, was also criticized by one reviewer. Source: Wikipedia (en)