Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story Of L. Ron Hubbard

by Russell Miller

Book by Russell Miller

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Cults, Religion, History, True Crime, Audiobook

390 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1987

About the author

Russell Miller (born c. 1938) is a British journalist and author of fifteen books, including biographies of Hugh Hefner, J. Paul Getty and L. Ron Hubbard. While under contract to The Sunday Times Magazine he won four press awards and was voted Writer of the Year by the Society of British Magazine Editors.

Reviews

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let’s begin at the beginning, with the DSM-5 criteria for narcissistic personality disorder:

1. Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
2. Expecting to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
3. Exaggerating your achievements and talents
4. Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
5. Believing that you are superior and can only be understood by or associate with equally special people
6. Requiring constant admiration
7. Expecting special favors and unquestioning compliance with your expectations
8. Taking advantage of others to get what you want
9. Having an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
10. Being envious of others and believing others envy you
11. Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner

L. Ron Hubbard is a classic example of these criteria. In every area of his life, he expected to be acknowledged as a master, despite proof of the opposite. In the navy, he aspired to command, but his fellow officers recognized his incompetence early and he rarely got a chance to cause too much mayhem before being removed from that capacity. Every single university or job application that he wrote contained what might be kindly called “exaggerations,” more realistically called fabrications. He truly felt entitled to do whatever he pleased, including marrying his second wife without divorcing the first one. When socializing with other science fiction writers, he told fabulous stories—the others did the same of course, but it was acknowledged that they were stretching the truth or improving the story. Hubbard would get really angry if anyone questioned the veracity of his tales—he expected to be believed unconditionally. He could take a tiny incident (he took a picture somewhere) and turn it into a major event (he was a National Geographic photographer) without blinking.

The rest of us, those who have consciences and who care about the people around us, can’t conceive of living life this way—this is why we are so slow to respond to a narcissist. For the first while that we are dealing with the person, we just can’t compute what is going on. It seems stranger than fiction. I had an assistant for a while who just about drove me to drink, until I realized that I was dealing with a narcissist. He just wanted a job listing on his resumé—he didn’t care if he did a good job and really didn’t listen to any instructions that he was given. He spent a lot of time telling me that his professors just didn’t realize what a genius he was, hence a C+ average. And of course there were lots of awesome projects and fabulous travel that he had done (note, he came from a wealthy family, so some of it was actually possible). But I have to wonder how much of the story was fiction.

Hubbard had a good dose of paranoia to go along with the personality disorder. But his is one case where just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean that someone isn’t out to get you! His habit of viewing international laws as tedious rules that someone as special as he shouldn’t have to worry about made him persona non grata around the world.

I think that since Hubbard considered himself far superior to everyone else, he expected that he would be able to do everything excellently. “After all,” he could tell himself, “if that guy can skipper an ocean liner and I’m better than him, then running an ocean liner will be a piece of cake for me.” No acknowledgement that training or talent had any bearing on success.

Long story short: Thankfully, LRH has moved on to the next level of research (i.e. died). Less happy is the fact that another control freak was waiting to take over the reins of Scientology and is still taking advantage of thousands of people. For an insider’s perspective, I would recommend Beyond Belief : My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape by Jenna Miscavige Hill (niece of the current leader).

[Benito · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the amazing tale of the world's most deluded, and most posthumously successful, con-man and really gets inside the machinations of his strangely mendacious imagination. You almost admire Hubbard as he streams off one ridiculous lie after another from adolescence onwards so as to make his place in the world with his few other talents - a fact he never faces by creating an ever greater history of himself which often you wonder if even he believes. You can see then just how, sporadically between the 1930s and 1950s, he was able to pump out a several thousand word sci-fi, western or fantasy adventure story nightly by just going out to the shed, often accompanied by a bottle of rum to aid his already overactive imagination, and typing away till dawn when the first of his three wives would send it off (inferring he somehow made very few typos or mistakes in 1st drafts) to whichever magazine he left instructions while he slept till 3pm that afternoon when he would wake up, have a big breakfast, perhaps go fishing and drinking with one of his buddies, to whom he would invent more hole-ridden and stupendous lies about his [in reality:] very flawed military record, and then stumble out to the shed and do it all over again. This would make a fantastic film if it wasn't for the fact that the Dianeticians/Scientologists would sue your ass off. I've heard of one British producer who did attempt to get such a project green-lighted in the 1980s only to have the studio chicken out. I would love to make a film just from the chapter in which Hubbard teams up with a black magician in California under the tutelage of an obviously close-to-death Alistair Crowley back in the UK. This Satanic trio rope in red-headed prostitutes to create a "Moon Child", (envisaged as some kind of Black-Magik Jesus with great powers and under their command.) The whole episode ends with Hubbard running off with the warlock's wife and a whole lot of his money which he uses to buy a yacht and sail away from the cops who have him, even back then a good ten years before he invents Dianetics, as a suspect on fraud charges. This echoes his later life in which he is pursued across the world on his large ship The Flying Scot Man (sic) attended by his followers who are thrown overboard if they disobey, and his nubile teenage "messengers." Even to the end, his cover blown in the press when some of his followers, including his third wife, are caught are caught and tried after attempting to destroy all Hubbard's government records, despite the fact that he sent many of them in himself (constantly denouncing his enemies, including his second wife and her suspected lover, as Communists in letters to J. Edgar Hoover throughout the 50s and 60s, causing the FBI to write him off as someone suspected to be highly mentally unstable and not to be trusted in his official file) Hubbard still believed he would persevere, and on the verge of his death created a film production company in the desert, directing the actors himself and sending those who he deemed unworthy of his direction off to his own feared re-education and punishment corps where they were treated as less than human - as opposed to MORE than human as they had been before, i.e. Thetans, but that's a whole other shtick we don't have time or space to get into here. You can discover the rest for yourself by buying the book online as it's apparently out of print for legal reasons in Australia. (I found this hardback US First Edition for only $US20 on Amazon.) Russell Miller is a former journalist for the Sunday Times in England and importantly lends a strong sense of journalistic integrity to his style. Hence while the first couple of chapters concerning the Hubbard family history and LRH as a child may seem a bit dry and superfluous they are there for a reason which becomes readily apparent in both humanising this weird anti-hero with whom it would otherwise be impossible to empathise with, and as exposition for the later ever-increasing action of the story as it really starts to rise, making the majority of the twenty-two chapters an action packed and hilarious ride, made frightening by the obvious veracity of the Russell Miller's well-researched revelations and anecdotes from those who knew and worked with Hubbard throughout his long, strange life.

[Timothy Hallinan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fitting biography of one of the world's great rats.

Certifiably evil if not certifiably insane, Hubbard appealed to the worst in the American character to found an empire that's made billions on empty promises and the egregious misuse of material the deluded faithful entrusted to the "church" during the auditing sessions that were supposed to help them clear their issues and banish their, ahem, engrams. Instead, their confessions are sometimes used against them when they decide to sto contributing their hard-earned money to this gigantic quasi-spiritual con game.

Hubbard was an inveterate liar, a shameless self-promoter, a borderline sociopath, and a really wretched writer. An appalling excuse for a human being who let his own wife take a federal rap for him and ended up a sort of Howard Hughes figure, squirreled away in hiding and trapped in grandiose fever dreams of persecution. What a beast.

Miller does a great job on him, as do Hubbard's own son and Bent Corydon in their book, "L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?" I'll let you guess which side they came down on.

[Molly · Rating 2 out of 5]

i don't take the decision to give up on a book lightly. i may come back to it later and try again, but i honestly just can't be bothered with it anymore. I think that's the main problem I have with this book; it's not that it's bad, it's just so incredibly detailed that it's tiring. i applaud the author for going to so much effort with the detail; he obviously spent a long time and a lot of effort researching this. And at some times it does really benefit the story, but at other times it's totally unnecessary. it's almost like he did so much research that he just wanted to shove it all in there just because he spent so much time on it and didn't want to waste any of it. i think it could have been edited down more.
L. Ron Hubbard is a fascinating character and the author does a really good job of portraying just how messed up he was. This book is not bad, I have just run out of patience for it. It's too long and drawn out for me. I think too, this book focuses a lot on Ron's family and his early life, and I am more interested the actual Scientology side of things, and it takes a long time to get to that. I feel that I could go and read another more succinct book to find out about that. So that's what I might do!

Also p.s. the Kindle edition is horribly edited. so many spelling and grammatical errors!!

[HillbillyMystic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone that knows me can attest to the fact that I've lived a rather vigorous life. However, it seems tame, normal, humble, innocent and boring to compared to LRH. Hubbard was a childhood hero of mine thanks to Battlefield Earth which was somehow the second epic I read after The Lord of the Rings. I had no idea that he was more well known for starting a strange, sadistic and nefarious cult. And while most of us hide a demon or two behind the thin Facebook veneer we present to the public, Lafayette was a true monster whom FBI agents, judges and whole countries made sadistic Hitlerian comparisons. Many family and close friends swore that he had paranoid schizophrenia but I would guess it was more like schizoaffective. He definitely had delusions of grandeur, paranoia, pathological lying and wrote, talked, worked and did everything with intense mania. It is hard to tell though if he believed everything he fabricated including his biography, beliefs and philosophy or if he knew it was all a big scam to make money and increase his power. I feel any adult who knowingly buys into this or any cult gets what they deserve for being so naive and lazy. I do feel sorry though for the children raised in this and any cult who did not get a choice. Fortunately, unlike the Mormons, very few people actually buy into Dianetics. I'm kind of glad people do though and hope they all keep writing books about it because for some reason I don't know how to quit you, LRH.

[britt_brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read several Scientology books, from apostate memoirs to Leah Remimi’s celebrity perspective to Dianetics (yep), but never an LRH biography. What a weird dude. Like most cult leaders, he’s a bombastic, charismatic, compulsive liar. But unlike others, he was a prolific science fiction author who started a religion to make dough. Scientology is his greatest fiction.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not quite sure where to begin about this biography of a lunatic. I will not be placing it in my ‘religion’ category, nor ‘science’ or even ‘science fiction’. I hesitate to create a new category of ‘cults’, as I don’t know how much of this stuff I can stomach. As I kept reading Russell’s very well researched and written biography, I kept thinking how strange this man was, but how stranger were those that followed him. ‘Bizarre’ simply does not describe Hubbard who didn’t work an honest day in his life, wrote turgid nonsense, had a disregard for his wives and children, lived a chaotic life, but seemed to have a messianic charisma for some and a definite attraction for tax evaders.

It was a page turner, but I’m kind of glad I’m done with him. Although I am interested in learning more, so maybe I will need that ‘cult’ category, after all.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know, you know how dodgy L. Ron Hubbard was. He's the progenitor of both Scientology and the cinematic dreadlock abortion that was Battlefield Earth.

But do you really know how shitty he was?

You know, reclusive paranoia shitty?

Telling one of your kids that their father was an exploded occultist rocket scientist and their mother was a Nazi spy shitty? (The same mother you'd stolen from said exploded occultist rocket scientist.)

Frequently telling people that the best way to make a lot of money was to start a cult shitty?

Giving props to the Hitler Youth shitty?

Leaving your wife to take the rap for massive theft of government documents shitty?

Whoo, given a lot of the things which crop up in here, being a congenital fabulist is actually one of the lesser shitty aspects of the guy's life. And he lies with the enthusiasm and lack of guile of a five-year-old.

(I didn't really need to picture L. Ron's insatiable pantsmanship, either, but I guess I'm going to have to live with that image now. I mean LOOK AT HIM.)



When I was living in a flat on Finchley Rd in London, I found a collection of Hubbard lectures on VHS, locked away in a cupboard. My flatmates and I checked out some of one of the tapes but couldn't bear to go further, given how creepy and smarmy the guy appeared. I'd picked up a lot about him by osmosis – being on the internet in the late '90s means I was well aware of Operation Clambake's works at shedding light on the unrestrained fuckwittery of LRH-related entities – but I wanted to know more. And this book turned out to be the place to learn.

Bare-Faced Messiah is a thorough biography from the 1980s which leaves no stone unturned. Published despite incredible opposition from the Church of Scientology, it unpicks the tapestry of bullshit surrounding the organisation's founder and figurehead, Hubbard.

Everything is in here. The incredible fabulism, the embroidering of truth – to the point where the bullshit artist convinces himself that he's owed medals by the Navy. Or that he's discovered incredible things in physics. Or that Scientology wasn't written as a way to ensure that he'd still make money during a dispute with a former backer of Dianetics.

One evening Gruber sat through a long account of Ron’s experiences in the Marine Corps, his exploration of the upper Amazon and his years as a white hunter in Africa. At the end of it he asked with obvious sarcasm: ‘Ron, you’re eighty-four years old aren’t you?’ ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Ron snapped. Gruber waved a notebook in which he had been jotting figures ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you were in the Marines seven years, you were a civil engineer for six years, you spent four years in Brazil, three in Africa, you barnstormed with your own flying circus for six years… I’ve just added up all the years you did this and that and it comes to eighty-four.’ Ron was furious that his escapades should be openly doubted. ‘He blew his tack,’ said Gruber

The personality of the guy comes across particularly well through the stories presented, culled from copious research and interviews with former adherents to the SF writer's get-rich-quick scheme. Not that he comes across well, but his penchant of zipping between confident bonhomie and paranoiac conspiracy-theorist uncle is communicated ably. It's the perfect example of a charlatan who, by dint of money and cultural capital at precisely the time everyday schmoes were looking for a panacea to the world – assuming they couldn't afford psychotherapy or couldn't be fucked joining a revivalist church – was catapulted to a position of power that eventually rotted his brain.

He ended this part of his journal with a jaunty little postscript addressed to the reader: ‘I will tell you the secret of this strange life I had. Sssh! I was born on Friday the thirteenth.’ It was, unfortunately, not quite true. 13 March 1911 was a Monday.

(Not that he needed much help in that regard: lying that much is bound to stick.)

Covering everything from his childhood through pulp writing years (and association with future SF greats) to the creation of Dianetics, Scientology, the Sea Org and eventual pointless meanderings through the oceans of the world to places where juntas rule the roost, the book covers LRH's life and death, and cuts off – despite what the Church probably would have you believe – at the point where David Miscavige and co. come into power. To read more about that, you'll have to check out Going Clear, but as the author of that book has acknowledged,

Russell Miller did the ground-breaking work on Hubbard and the Church of Scientology that every future biographer relies upon.

I had expected this book to be thorough, but I hadn't expected it to be so delightfully bitchy. Perhaps understandably, Miller – who had been under surveillance by the Church for some time, and likely still is – is keen to put the boot in. It's not malicious – the facts are almost as incredible as anything you could make up – but the relish with which the author retells the stories of excess and control is moreish.

If you're interested in the guy, read this. Maybe keep an eye out for strange cars watching your driveway, but read this.

[Lyn Stapleton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book on the life of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. He was a self-absorbed, narcissistic, pathological liar. He was certainly border line schizophrenic if not insane. It was a fascinating read and one has to wonder how one of the largest "churches" in the world can still defend him. The "church" tried many times to stop publication of this book, and no wonder. It reveals exactly what their founder was like.

The author focuses on Hubbard's life from childhood until death and not the Church of Scientology. I recommend this to anyone interested in the life of the founder of what is probably the largest cult in the world.

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know those times when being happy makes you vulnerable. I was wandering around town, happy as, one day and a Dianetics person caught me. Would I do a survey....well, yes, why not?

And then that made me curious.

If this were fiction, you'd probably call it trash. A ludicrous storyline that defies any concept of reality. Ah, but it is reality. Most depressingly for me, when the guy was at his most psychotic he was behaving exactly like the person I was living with at the time. So, mundane commonplace reality, even.

[Cassandra]

I finished reading Bare-Faced Messiah a few days ago and it's still clanging around inside my head. Much of the content was familiar because I've listened to the LPotL LRH series several times, but I'm so glad I actually read the book. Miller is a delightful storyteller and excels at providing depth and historic/social context for the episodes in Hubbard's life. I've been interested in Hubbard and the history of Dianetics and Scientology long enough that I understood he was an exceptionally charismatic and devious individual but Bare-Faced Messiah really drove home how effective he was at manipulating people and building fanatical loyalty.

One thing I feel compelled to share is that this book was published 30+ years ago and does show its age in some ways that might startle a reader in 2021. Nothing malicious or horrifying, but Miller does reproduce some of Hubbard's racist, sexist, and otherwise disturbing beliefs and actions without the framing I'd expect in a book written today. It's just a little jarring and might be worth keeping in mind before reading.

[Valerie Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit bloated but a fascinating look at a narcissist and possible schizophrenic who began a cult.

[G. Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have an odd fascination with the Church of Scientology. Particularly it's secrecy, organization and the mind-boggling way it somehow has the governments blessing of being a legalized cult and gets away with some of the most ridiculous things ever.

The story of L. Ron Hubbard is an interesting one for sure. This book is as detailed and as well researched as it could be. And again, I'm perplexed at how this man could gain so many followers. He was an absolute crackpot who lied about nearly every aspect of his life - huge, unbelievable lies - and people bought into it and *believed him*.

This book is not an in-depth study of Scientology. There are other books that get into that subject. This is a bio of L. Ron Hubbard mixed with thoughts and stories from other people who spent time with him.

[Bobby Desmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

A damningly thorough biography of the most notorious pathological liar of the late twentieth century. A must read for anyone with an interest in Scientology, cults, religion, or delusion. The true story of LRH is so much more bizarre than any of his sci-fi novels.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

At his most harmless, the portrait Russell Miller constructs of L. Ron Hubbard is akin to General Norton or a Mark Twain character; at his most destructive, he's an abusive, paranoid, controlling cult leader. The man is fascinating regardless, and Miller is good about putting the focus on the man and not the religion he spawned. For more on Scientology, I would recommend "Going Clear."

[Kate Curtis-Hawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

L. Ron Hubbard is self absorbed, Narcissistic, insane, and a pathological liar. All of these things were unbeknownst to me before I read the book but it has now become abundantly clear.

I had been interested in Scientology ever since several Hollywood stars had come out as followers, not in the sense that I wanted to become a Scientologist, but rather that I was curious how in the world so many were convinced to tithe, tithe, tithe. One day I was browsing the internet and had come across an article that revealed this books existence. When I read the article I learned that it had been published in the eighties but blocked from publication in the US until now, a rather interesting fact. That peaked my interest and filled me with a curiosity to learn why the church would fight so hard to get a book blocked from publication, so I bought it.

The book itself is not so much an analyzation of the church and its founder but rather what the title suggests, its a story of L. Ron Hubbard from the start of his life to its finish. Russell Miller tells the story of LRH's life from an unbiased view and cites all of his sources with great care and detail, and as a result the book reads like a 60 Minutes segment.

I was most shocked at just how horrible of person LRH was, I had vaguely heard of him from his work in Science Fiction back in the pulp era but I didn't know anything specifically. What I came to learn was that LRH was a charlatan and insane narcissist of the highest order, a man who is so self absorbed that he needs to feel as though he is important. I think that his obsession with feeling important comes from the days of his spoiled childhood (Russell throws in some interesting family stories about this at the begging of the book) where LRH was the most beloved of all his fathers children. That need for importance drove Hubbard through his life until he finally ended up with a body of followers who worshiped him like Jesus, but that need would also be his downfall.

As he progressed through life he became ever more paranoid and insane, and I think that he had been lying so often and so much that he actually began to believe what he was telling people. This insanity led to the banishing of his own children, two divorces, a rash of suicides from his followers, federal investigation, and the banishment from several countries. When Hubbard set out to make his mark on the world he was often looking after the monetary gains of his choices, this becomes most evident in the chapter where Mr. Miller chronicles Hubbard's time as a Satanist under the tutelage of one of Alastair Crowley's students. Hubbard left the satanic cult because it was yielding him no money and elected to bring out his master money making plan, invent a religion.

Hubbard did just that and the rest is history, as his mental state declined he became ever more paranoid and violent until his eventual death in 1986. I learned a lot about Scientology and its estranged founder through my reading and believe that I have come away with my answer that I was looking for. It would seem that if anything, LRH was charismatic, and it was that charm that led people to the cult and kept them there, no matter what happened. I would recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in Scientology for its wealth of information on the cults history, and after all, protection begins with education.

[Grace Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitive and unputdownable. The true story of L. Ron Hubbard, arguably the twentieth century’s pre-eminent conman/fantasist/cult leader (let’s face it, he has competition) is bizarre and incredible.

The amount of research Miller has poured into this book is mind-boggling. It may not have been necessary to include all of the details, particularly in the chapters about his early life - but when your subject is this fascinating, why wouldn’t you? The story really takes flight when Hubbard publishes ‘Dianetics’. From this point on, the book effectively becomes a history of the rise of Scientology, but still revolves inevitably around its delusional, dictatorial subject.

There is a healthy dose of deadpan mockery but Miller also does a good job of exposing the (very) dark side of his subject’s personality and ably demonstrates that Hubbard cannot be dismissed as just another harmless crank. This is essential reading for anyone interested in, or intrigued by, Scientology.

[Dave Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A charismatic, pathological liar with boundless imagination, the truth of L. Ron Hubbard's life is almost stranger than the fictional one he dreamed up and eventually came to believe himself.
Miller did his research carefully, and tried to go back to primary or verifiable sources wherever possible. The story is both fascinating and disturbing.

The author has a a free copy available for download on his website (you'll need a copy of winzip, 7-zip or similar to 'unzip' the file), as well as additional material such as original interview transcripts and details of the attempts to prevent the book's publication.
http://www.spaink.net/cos/rmiller/ind...
Thoroughly recommended.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book follows Hubbard's childhood through his death. He was always a troubled person and he finally found a way to make money. He was a very gifted writer of science fiction and had a great following. He told his friends that the only way to make money would be to start a "church" and that's exactly what he did, making up his own rules as he went along and telling stories right out of his science fiction novels.

This is not only a story of a man who can make people believe everything he says and does, but they continue to support him and follow him even through abuses. This was a very sick man.

[Dave G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marcus Aurelius


Just now ·



..
Finished read Bare-Faced Messiah.This is the book that Scientologists dont want you to read.This is the real biography of L.Ron hubbard,not one edited by The Church of Scientology.Hubbard was an only child,spoiled and a habutiual liar through out his whole life.In his last years he admitted to a doctor he did everything for power and money.A very good book of the life of L.Ron Hubbard.After reading this I'm sure most people will come to veiw him as nothing more than a scammer through out his whole life.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating read. Though I've read several books on the organization of Scientology, there's not a lot of reliable information on the founder himself. I frequently was aghast at the stories in this book. Hubbard was clearly a very disturbed and mentally unhealthy person. He died a multi-millionaire, but he also died alone, in seclusion, paranoid, sick, and afraid.

I highly recommend Bare-Faced Messiah to anyone who enjoys biographies or histories. You'll never be bored, and will learn a lot.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bare-Faced Messiah by British journalist, Russell Miller, is, as the subtitle explains, "the classic expose of the extraordinary true life of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology."

The last book I finished, "A Billion Years: My Escape from Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology" was a memoir by Mike Rinder, ex-Scientologist, who referred to the "Bare-Faced Messiah" as a shocking confirmation of the red flags and conscious recognition of the delusional and dangerous narcissist leadership of L. Ron Hubbard. Rinder's story involved a close look at his many-years involvement with Scientology, particularly the years that he spent from his teens and onwards in the exclusive "Sea Org" leadership group and other high ranking experiences in the cult. He makes quite a few references to L. Ron Hubbard, but for most of his life in Scientology, he was in awe of the man-- as were/are thousands of others. What was it about this man that mesmerized his followers and kept them loyal to Scientology and L. Ron, even while being witness, to and subjected to, horrific abuses and deprivations? Rinder's referral to the "Bare-Faced Messiah" as the book that ultimately jolted him out of the spell of LRH's cult and beliefs, appealed to me. I am always curious about why and how intelligent, often insightful, people are taken in by despots and dictators.

In the late 80s the author, Russell Miller, spent two years posthumously researching about L. Ron Hubbard and the Scientology movement. Miller interviewed a number of ex-Scientologists who knew and were closely connected with L. Ron, as well as researching his early pre-Scientology life with interviews with relatives, newspaper and other information, and War records, etc. Miller traveled in Britain and to the United States when he was doing his thorough investigations. Wikipedia records the usual "dirty tricks" campaigns that Miller was subjected to (common fare with L. Ron and his disciples when "wogs" (outsiders) get too close to knowing about the organization, or too threatening to the wealth and power. In Wikipedia, I read:

"In the 1980s Miller spent two years researching Bare-faced Messiah, a posthumous biography of the science-fiction author who had founded Scientology. The book challenges the official account of Hubbard's life and work promoted by the Church of Scientology and it was serialised in The Sunday Times.

While researching the book in the United States, Miller was spied upon. His friends and business associates also received visits from Scientologists and private detectives. Attempts were made to frame him for the murder of a London private detective, the murder of American singer Dean Reed in East Berlin and a fire in an aircraft factory. Senior executives at publishers Michael Joseph, and at The Sunday Times, which serialised the book, received threatening phone calls and also a visit from private investigator Eugene Ingram, who worked for the Church.[3] Another private investigator, Jarl Grieve Einar Cynewulf, told The Sunday Times journalists that he had been offered "large sums of money" to find a link between Miller and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)"

It is fortunate for Miller that at the time that Scientology had already accrued a reputation globally as a whacky, delusional cult-- some countries would see it as dangerous-- with enough public information from ex-Scientologists in the press to make it likely that most reports against journalists would be met with eye-rolling and head-shaking disbelief.

The thorough treatment given the subject-- the charlatan, delusional story-teller, manic-depressive, paranoid-schizophrenic, womanizer, and criminal, L. Ron Hubbard was also verified by the fairly substantial amount of 'official documents' lent to Miller by ex-Scientologist, Gerry Armstrong. The original book is 'out of print' and while you can get hold of some used copies, they are very expensive. I read the Kindle book, which is available for a reasonable cost. A free PDF is advertised online, but when you get to the site you will likely find that it is not available.

I have tried to avoid spoilers because if you are interested in L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, I want you to read the whole story, unspoiled. The original book is 400+ pages, so not a quick-read.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a lot. A lot. Even with non-fiction I typically don't have to take breaks from something I'm listening to except to accomodate workflow/life/etc.

This book required breaks, and it's not through any fault of the author's.

L. Ron Hubbard was insane. Like, I knew he was insane, but he was Insane with a Capital I. The stories and details that flew from his mouth was like bullshit straight from a minigun and it gets nauseating to hear the same lies and the same behaviors over, and over, and over, and over. But I didn't chalk that up to Miller spending too much time with repetitive details or misplaced focus -- or maybe only to a certain extent. For the most part, it just really was that Hubbard was a crazed, apparently pathological liar who actually claimed that the best way to make money was to start a religion.

This book was published in 1988, so we're decades before the current era of some light to not-so-light editorializing with our journalism. If you're looking for straight fact with no embellishment or commentary, that's what this delivers. Listening to the audiobook, I often felt as though the author was asserting what he wrote as fact, rather than presenting it in an "as-told" way. He wasn't giving what I would consider quite enough distinction between the author's thoughts and what the author was being told.

I'd like to try something else that offers more reflection on and discussion of the man's life. If you want to know more about LRH without committing to a book this dry or this long, consider listening to Behind The Bastards. He breaks it all down in 5 hour-long (and incredibly funny) episodes and got most of his content from this very book.

[James Hartley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great read - hugely insightful into the origins of Scientology, of course, but also as a character study and, perhaps most importantly, as evidence of the innocent naivity of human beings. Hubbard is a piece of work all right, and there are intimations of sleaze, especially as he got older and had his weird little group of teenage girls 'looking after him' (shades of Gaddafi?), but there's no denying he had a genius for creating far-fetched tales people liked to hear, read and believe in.
Hubbard was a persuasive writer who seized the opportunity to exploit his 'readers' vulnerabilities and create various monsters which, in the end, tortured him to death. Those around him, convinced by his rhetoric and of his divinity, continued to believe in Ron's monsters - and do so to this day. This may be hard to conceive of, but, if you examine any newspaper or religious text humans read and believe in today - especially one you may not be familiar with in your culture - you will see that it is not so hard to believe. Human beings really will believe in any old shit, especially if it's wrapped up in mystical tinsel and promises some kind of enlightenment. The old ape hierarchy is also never far from the equation - some kind of 'godlike' figure in charge who has powers.
Well-written by Miller, in a wry, sardonic style, Bare-Faced Messiah is a very readable, enlightening, amusing account of one of the greatest late twentieth century conmen.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

All I can say is, what a nut job. The life of L. Ron Hubbard feels like more fiction than fact. A self professed adventurer whose exploits were dubious, a pulp fiction writer, to science fiction writer, to a failed naval stint, to mind "scientist," to cult founder, to living on ships, to having teenage girls running around doing his bidding, to letting his (3rd) wife take the legal fall for him, to living his days out in seclusion. It's a wild ride, and that's only some of it.

[Philip Athans · Rating 5 out of 5]

A massive and surprisingly detailed and intimate look at the reality behind a man who cloaked his entire life in layer after layer of increasingly bizarre fiction.

I do have to ping the publisher (hard!) for the absolute mess the text is in, though. This is clearly an un-proofed scan of the earlier publication and is a non-stop typo fest that made reading it rather more of a chore than it should have been. HIRE A PROOFREADER!

[AJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I devoured this as I do most books about Scientology. It was a rare, truthful look at Hubbard’s life, but not only that, it also fact-checked his many lies and exaggerations. He came with receipts. If Hubbard, Miscavige and the church will not be held accountable at least we can read books like this.

[The NotsoSuperMom · Rating 4 out of 5]

EXTREMELY detailed and thick with facts. L. Ron Hubbard was a con, a thief and a CULT Leader and sadly all of his mentally disturbed policies and practices are still upheld and carried out today by his worshipers.

[Jessica Bauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great book! He does an excellent job of taking the lies and putting them next to the truths. It was so hard to put down.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best on LRH I have read so far.