A sad and painful but bravely told story. Acknowledging his son’s mistakes and hoping things will change, the author...
A father’s nightmarish account of the Church of Scientology’s transformation into a “coercive” cult under the authoritarian leadership of his son, David Miscavige.
Musician Ron Miscavige, now 80, broke with Scientology in 2012 after more than four decades as a member, nearly 30 of them as a staffer at the church’s base near Hemet, California, where he composed and arranged music for films and videos. This insider’s memoir, published despite a threatened lawsuit for libel—and so explosive that even its sometimes cliché-ridden sentences do not interfere with compulsive reading—confirms allegations of wrongdoing made familiar to many by the book and HBO exposé Going Clear. David rose to power after church founder L. Ron Hubbard’s 1986 death and soon displayed a burgeoning “mean streak and ruthless ways” that turned an organization dedicated to world betterment into a “manipulative, coercive, and…evil” group aimed at “strong-arming people out of their money.” After describing David’s happy childhood in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town, the author explains how a chance encounter led the family to join Scientology: David’s asthma improved, and the author found himself better able to manage his difficult first marriage. But bright, hardworking David changed drastically as the head of the church. The author speculates that David’s habit of denigrating Scientology members may trace back to childhood when, occasionally bullied over his diminutive size, he would pick fights with classmates. Whatever the reason, David has “become corrupt” as chairman of the church, rebuking members, giving brutal tongue-lashings, “nullifying” people, demanding they work to the brink of exhaustion, and isolating offenders in “The Hole.” Indeed, writes the author, David exhibits the characteristics of a sociopath. The elder Miscavige was treated routinely in a “demeaning” manner. On leaving the church, he says, he was “disconnected”—Scientologists, including his two daughters, may no longer communicate with him—and followed by detectives.
A sad and painful but bravely told story. Acknowledging his son’s mistakes and hoping things will change, the author concludes, “David, I forgive you.”Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-09693-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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