Review
"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
Thoroughly engrossing page-turner on the shape-shifting Church of Scientology and its despotic, possibly criminal hierarchy. Rolling Stone contributing editor Reitman based this debut on an award-winning article she wrote for that magazine in 2006 amid a flurry of media interest in the normally press-averse organization as it launched an antic publicity campaign featuring the world’s most famous Scientologist, Tom Cruise. For most of its 50-plus-year history, Scientology not only avoided attention; it viciously attacked anyone who dared come after it with every means, legal and otherwise, at its disposal. Some say it has even managed to get away with murder (or manslaughter), indentured servitude of minors, brainwashing and the stalking of apostates. So how did such a notoriously thin-skinned and anti-social belief system acquire any believers at all? Reitman delves into the pop-psychology, positive-thinking origins of the cult in the early ’50s in the mind of science-fiction hack, truth-bender and would-be commodore of the planet L. Ron Hubbard. A complex, Ponzi-like structure of franchises and a catechism called the Bridge to Total Freedom requiring steep payment from pilgrims at every point along the way resulted in rapid financial growth. As the cult grew in size, its founder took to the sea, creating a society resembling a sci-fi dystopia, designed both to exalt himself and evade tax laws on the land. After Hubbard died an isolated and paranoid hermit, a young man named David Miscavige muscled his way to the top with the blunt aplomb of a Stalinist apparatchik, punctuating his ascendancy with consequent purges of perceived rivals. Reitman somehow manages to maintain an objective stance throughout the book. One of her sources is a charmingly (and surprisingly) independent-minded young second-generation Scientologist named Natalie, whom the author posits as representing an alternative, more recognizably human future of the church—if the top dogs don’t first succeed in blowing it all to bits. A bizarre and complicated history told with masterful control.
National author tour including New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco
--Kirkus, STARRED review
Product 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.
0 有用 庄常飞 2012-01-04 10:48:40
没有什么太sensationalist的东西,但放在一起还是很震撼,特别是那些personal story,最后以北京结尾好ironic有木有,咕咕
0 有用 艾習角™ 2012-08-08 15:22:54
翻。并不觉得好。但凡组织,总有不能示人的一面。谋利的组织尤其如此。
0 有用 逆铭睡眼惺忪地 2017-11-27 11:18:52
本来以为只是个教义中二的新兴宗教,结果原来是个不但谋财而且害命的邪教啊,和它作对的轻则家破重则人亡。怪不得名声这么差。把行驶在公海上的游艇当基地什么的简直有三体的既视感。
0 有用 阿蒙 2024-01-25 07:23:28 美国
挺无聊的,就是普通纪实文学,如果你对与宗教和邪教等题材很感兴趣可以看看
0 有用 Marni 2021-04-17 14:48:51
写挺详细的。
0 有用 阿蒙 2024-01-25 07:23:28 美国
挺无聊的,就是普通纪实文学,如果你对与宗教和邪教等题材很感兴趣可以看看
0 有用 Marni 2021-04-17 14:48:51
写挺详细的。
0 有用 逆铭睡眼惺忪地 2017-11-27 11:18:52
本来以为只是个教义中二的新兴宗教,结果原来是个不但谋财而且害命的邪教啊,和它作对的轻则家破重则人亡。怪不得名声这么差。把行驶在公海上的游艇当基地什么的简直有三体的既视感。
0 有用 仄仄仄 2013-12-11 13:46:48
曾经刷NY times推荐书的像是回不来了
0 有用 艾習角™ 2012-08-08 15:22:54
翻。并不觉得好。但凡组织,总有不能示人的一面。谋利的组织尤其如此。