A bizarre and complicated history told with masterful control.
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.Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-618-88302-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
Only the most dedicated Ginsburg fans, and there are many, will devour everything here, but most readers will find items of...
From the second woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court, a collection of writings ranging from the slight to the serious.
Now 83, women’s rights icon Ginsburg nears the close of her distinguished career as a law professor, appellate advocate, judge, and justice, arguably having done more to move our law in the direction of gender equality than any living person. Now, as two Georgetown Law professors, Hartnett and Williams (emerita) prepare her official biography, they have collected Ginsburg’s speeches, lectures, articles, and opinions, some on offer here. They preface most of this material with explanatory, wholly complimentary notes and begin with a chapter of juvenilia, demonstrating Ginsburg’s early interest in human rights and in preserving individual liberties. Passages devoted to “the lighter side” of life at the Supreme Court include, for example, Ginsburg’s musings on lawyers depicted in opera, not least her own “starring” role in Scalia/Ginsburg. There follows a section on “waypavers” and “pathmarkers,” Ginsburg’s tributes to, among others, Belva Lockwood, the first woman admitted to the Supreme Court Bar, Gloria Steinem, “the face of feminism,” and Sandra Day O’Connor, the court’s first woman justice. Especially good are the author’s observations on the court’s “Jewish seat” and her charming lecture on four notable Supreme Court wives. These, and many other agreeable selections, are characterized as “remarks,” delivered and often recycled for various audiences. The collection also contains numerous bench announcements, summaries of some of Ginsburg’s most consequential opinions and dissents, and a few revealing essays that offer keys to her jurisprudence: for example, her perspective on the role of dissents, the value of consulting foreign law, and the wisdom of “measured motions” by the judiciary, wherein she mildly criticizes Roe v. Wade for provoking a backlash and halting “a political process that was moving in a reform direction.”
Only the most dedicated Ginsburg fans, and there are many, will devour everything here, but most readers will find items of interest from this icon of women’s rights.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-4524-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Asante is a talented writer, but his memoir is undernourished.
A young black man’s self-destructive arc, cut short by a passion for writing.
Asante’s (It’s Bigger than Hip-Hop, 2008, etc.) memoir, based on his teenage years in inner-city Philadelphia, undoubtedly reflects the experiences of many African-American youngsters today in such cities. By age 14, the author was an inquisitive, insecure teen facing the hazards that led his beleaguered mother, a teacher, to warn him, “[t]hey are out there looking for young black boys to put in the system.” This was first driven home to Asante when his brother received a long prison sentence for statutory rape; later, his father, a proud, unyielding scholar of Afrocentrism, abruptly left under financial strain, and his mother was hospitalized after increasing emotional instability. Despite their strong influences, Asante seemed headed for jail or death on the streets. This is not unexplored territory, but the book’s strength lies in Asante’s vibrant, specific observations and, at times, the percussive prose that captures them. The author’s fluid, filmic images of black urban life feel unique and disturbing: “Fiends, as thin as crack pipes, dance—the dancing dead….Everybody’s eyes curry yellow or smog gray, dead as sunken ships.” Unfortunately, this is balanced by a familiar stance of adolescent hip-hop braggadocio (with some of that genre’s misogyny) and by narrative melodrama of gangs and drug dealing that is neatly resolved in the final chapters, when an alternative school experience finally broke through Asante’s ennui and the murderous dealers to whom he owed thousands were conveniently arrested. The author constantly breaks up the storytelling with unnecessary spacing, lyrics from (mostly) 1990s rap, excerpts from his mother’s journal, letters from his imprisoned brother, and quotations from the scholars he encountered on his intellectual walkabout in his late adolescence. Still, young readers may benefit from Asante’s message: that an embrace of books and culture can help one slough off the genuinely dangerous pathologies of urban life.
Asante is a talented writer, but his memoir is undernourished.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9341-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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