Inside Scientology: The Story Of America's Most Secretive Religion

Author: Janet Reitman

Stock information

General Fields

  • : 40.00 NZD
  • : 9780547750354
  • : Mariner Books
  • : Mariner Books
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  • : 0.454
  • : August 2012
  • : 203mm X 132mm X 28mm
  • : United States
  • : 0.0
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • :
  • : Janet Reitman
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  • : Paperback / softback
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  • :
  • :
  • : 299.936
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  • :
  • : 464
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Barcode 9780547750354
9780547750354

Description

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.

Reviews

""Inside Scientology" is an engrossing, groundbreaking work that brings a welcome sense of fair-mindedness to a subject that is, for many journalists and scholars, too hot to touch. Reitman has accomplished the miracle of adding light without heat."
--Lawrence Wright, author of "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11"

""Inside Scientology" goes beyond the celebrities and the scandals--though they're here in all their absurdity and horror--to find in Scientology a more profound story about "technology" as an article of faith and faith as a vessel for science, or, at least, science fiction. With precision and empathy, Janet Reitman has in this definitive investigation laid bare the genesis and possibly the endgame of America's strangest religion."
--Jeff Sharlet, author of "The Family" and "C Street"