Awesome news! Haven't had a chance to get my hands on this book yet and I can't wait!
In your opinion how does it stack up against Messiah or Madman?
I've read numerous books about Scn (Going Clear, Beyond Belief, etc.), which were mostly first person accounts from former members, but I've only read a couple of full LRH biographies. Other than bridge pub's LRH Series, of course (gettin a headache just thinking about that!)
Eager to check this out!
Two very different books. Each complement the other.
Messiah or Madman? was published first and, having been under attack, was rushed to print, and with an emergency cover. The intended cover, which had featured Hubbard's head flying out of an erupting volcano, had been stopped, by Scientology, by court order.
This is the cover for the later editions:
Messiah or Madman? was not really a biography as much as an examination, using an unorthodox format, of both Hubbard
and Scientology, including, in detail, its ideas and methods, and their background.
L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? by Class VIII auditor Bent Corydon., 2nd edition:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0942637577/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-0654802-4263319
Messiah or Madman?
The book L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? has been published in three English language editions, each further updated and expanded (1987, 1992, and 1996.) There is also a hardbound Russian language edition that became available in 2005.
Unlike most other books on Scientology, 'Messiah or Madman?' examines both the "positives" and "negatives" of the subject.
An excerpt from the book flap for the 464 page 1996 edition:
"I have high hopes of smashing my name
into history so violently that it will take a
legendary form even if all the books are
destroyed. That goal is the real goal as far as
I am concerned. Things which stand too
consistently in my way make me nervous.
It's a pretty big job. In a hundred years
Roosevelt will have been forgotten - which
gives some idea of the magnitude of my
attempt. And all this boils and froths inside
my head...
"Psychiatrists, reaching the high of the
dusty desk, tell us that Alexander, Genghis
Khan and Napoleon were madmen. I know
they're maligning some very intelligent
gentlemen."
L. Ron Hubbard wrote these words in a letter to
his first wife in 1938.
In 1950 he wrote the bestseller 'Dianetics, the
Modern Science of Mental Health. This inspired a
layman oriented mental health movement which,
ultimately, developed into Scientology, the most
profitable of the money-making new religions.
Hubbard's early Dianetic and Scientology writings
borrow freely from Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and
the founder of General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski.
And P.T. Barnum appears to have been an inspiration.
Hubbard also took much from the writings of Aleister
Crowley - self-proclaimed "Beast 666." This is a source
of embarrassment for the Scientology Church, which
is determined to achieve broad public acceptance.
In the 1960s Hubbard incorporated Brainwashing
methodologies into the subject. He established the
"Fair Game Policy" which states that an "enemy" of
Scientology "may be deprived of property or injured
by any means by any Scientologist, without
discipline of that Scientologist. May be tricked,
sued, lied to or destroyed."
He also became the Commodore of his own private
navy, and began to refer to himself as "Source."
L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? exposes
as never before the dark side of Scientology, yet
contains an in-depth examination of the potential
positives of the subject and their actual origins.
________________
Bare-Faced Messiah is a traditional biography, and really the only traditional biography on Hubbard.
After over thirty years of trying, the CofS has failed to produce a serious, traditional, biography on its founder, settling for a "Ron Encyclopedia," which is a series of puffed-up coffee table books, consisting of some Hubbard essays and lots and lots of full page pictures of Hubbard.
This is the cover of the paperback
Bare-Faced Messiah from the late 1980s: