Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion
by:
Janet Reitman (author)
Scientology, created in 1954 by a prolific sci-fi writer named L. Ron Hubbard, claims to be the world’s fastest growing religion, with millions of members around the world and huge financial holdings. Its celebrity believers keep its profile high, and its teams of “volunteer ministers” offer aid...
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Scientology, created in 1954 by a prolific sci-fi writer named L. Ron Hubbard, claims to be the world’s fastest growing religion, with millions of members around the world and huge financial holdings. Its celebrity believers keep its profile high, and its teams of “volunteer ministers” offer aid at disaster sites such as Haiti and the World Trade Center. But Scientology is also a notably closed faith, harassing journalists and others through litigation and intimidation, even infiltrating the highest levels of the government to further its goals. Its attacks on psychiatry and its requirement that believers pay as much as tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars for salvation have drawn scrutiny and skepticism. And ex-members use the Internet to share stories of harassment and abuse. Now Janet Reitman offers the first full journalistic history of the Church of Scientology, in an evenhanded account that at last establishes the astonishing truth about the controversial religion. She traces Scientology’s development from the birth of Dianetics to today, following its metamorphosis from a pseudoscientific self-help group to a worldwide spiritual corporation with profound control over its followers and even ex-followers. Based on five years of research, unprecedented access to Church officials, confidential documents, and extensive interviews with current and former Scientologists, this is the defining book about a little-known world.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780618883028 (0618883029)
ASIN: 618883029
Publish date: July 5th 2011
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Pages no: 444
Edition language: English
As you read this book you wonder just HOW so people can give their lives and souls to such a corrupt organisation and laughably silly "religion". You will hear how absolute power does indeed corrupt absolutely.Despite Scientology providing so ammunition for the author to attack with, the author does...
I just can't resist people doing crazy stupid things in the name of religion. Especially in modern times.
This is a challenging read owing to the scope and density of information, but it's a worthwhile pursuit if you want to see an in-depth example of how insanity is contagious. If you don't feel up to the task of reading the entire book, I recommend reading the first three chapters, especially if you'r...
Blurb:If Americans don't know much about history, they know even less about Scientology. If asked, they might rattle off the names of celebrity followers Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and founder L. Ron Hubbard, but few of us have more than a scattered sense of what it is and how it developed. Janet...
Once I started reading I couldn't turn away. The story of Scientology has it all--good and evil, drugs and violence and a cast of characters and organizations that put any dystopian fiction to shame. If it wasn't so awful that real people get wrapped up in this, it'd make a great movie or tv series....