Jenna Miscavige Hill's "Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape" dropped February 5th. She's David's niece.

Re: LRH being a cross between Indiana Jones/Captain America - have you seen the creepy commercial that starts out "He was the youngest Eagle Scout ever..." and proceeds to detail Indiana Jones/Captain America-like exploits and ends up with, "He is... L. Ron Hubbard!"

What the hell?

Big portions of Kate Bornstein's recent memoirs (_A Queer and Pleasant Danger_) concern her time spent in Sea Org on those ships. It's one personal view, but it adds to the story, and the book is overall excellent.

The story of Lil' Lafayette Hubbard is a reminder to confront compulsive lying in children early on, before they become pathological liars.

Jon Atack did this over twenty years ago in his book 'A Piece of Blue Sky'. It is now available free via the Interwebs. But it's good to see it come up again to inoculate a new generation against Scientology.

And yes MTM, that creepy commercial repeats all the utterly-disproven self-aggrandizing bullshit that Hubbard made up about himself, all things that Atack refuted in his book.

Oh, and funny story via Atack's book about Hubbard and his claimed exploits and achievements. Way back in the day, an older Hubbard was bloviating at some Hollywood cocktail party about his exploits and the person he was bloviating at stopped him thus: "Mr. Hubbard, if you were to have accomplised even some of these things you claim, you would have to be nearly a hundred years old!"

I bought it last night while I watched the Daily show.

Another great book is Inside Scientology by Janet Reitman, which is only about a year or so old. Haven't read Wright's book yet, but that book has a great journalistic take on the church as well. And Kate Bornstein's A Queer and Pleasant Danger is wonderfully sad and inspiring at the same time.

If I had the money I would hand out copies of this book to all the people sitting down for "stress tests" downtown every weekend.

@9 I was just about to post about that book. 'Inside Scientology' was a great read and while I was watching 'The Master' I couldn't help hear Reitman's voice commenting about action.
I did feel there was a stronger voice in the book from the years of Hubbard's life, so I'm happy to hear this new book focuses on the current leader just as much as on Hubbard.
Miscaivage really does sound like a creepy, scary guy.

I finished Wright's book last night and thought it was brilliant. I'd also like to add that much of the biographical stuff about L. Ron Hubbard is particularly hilarious. The real Hubbard was a fuck-up, a whiner, a back-stabber and a bully but managed to used his master bullshitting skills to convince some people that he was the savior of humanity. It's as if a religion formed around the Most Interesting Man in the World from those Dos Equis commercials.

I'm sure everyone has seen this article that got Time Magazine in so much trouble with the church. Great read.