Culture

Scientology: The Story

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief BY Lawrence Wright. Knopf. Hardcover, 448 pages. $28.
The cover of Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

Not to be read home alone on a stormy night: Going Clear, Lawrence Wright’s scary book about Scientology and its influence, with its accounts of vindictive lawyers and apostate captives confined in the “Hole,” a building that held dozens of people at a time. It’s a true horror story, the most comprehensive among a number of books published on the subject in the past few years, many of them personal accounts by people who have managed to escape or were evicted from the clutches of a group they came to feel was destroying them.