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The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
July 2011
On Sale: July 5, 2011
434 pages
ISBN: 0618883029
EAN: 9780618883028
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Religion
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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