Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Smee (talk | contribs) at 07:19, 14 November 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

A Piece of Blue Sky is a book written in 1990 by Jon Atack, investigating L. Ron Hubbard and his enterprises such as Dianetics and the Church of Scientology.

Before the book had even been released, Scientology attorneys sought to have a stop put to it in court. Their efforts were unsuccessful.

In 1995, a British court found Atack guilty of libel against Margaret Hodkin, the headmistress of Scientology's Greenfields School in the U.K. and issued an injunction against Atack forbidding him from publishing the offending paragraph on page 336 of the book. The paragraph, however, is available to be read in full on the court injunction itself.

Amazon.com was the subject of controversy when it removed the book from its listings, then reversed itself and included it after public outcry.

The book is available in its entirety on the internet here.

The origin of the title A Piece of Blue Sky is explained at the beginning of the book:

It was 1950, in the early, heady days of Dianetics, soon after L. Ron Hubbard opened the doors of his first organization to the clamoring crowd. Up until then, Hubbard was known only to readers of pulp fiction, but now he had an instant best-seller with a book that promised to solve every problem of the human mind, and the cash was pouring in. Hubbard found it easy to create schemes to part his new following from their money. One of the first tasks was to arrange "grades" of membership, offering supposedly greater rewards, at increasingly higher prices. Over thirty years later, an associate wryly remembered Hubbard turning to him and confiding, no doubt with a smile, "Let's sell these people a piece of blue sky."

References

1. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/atack/holmes/bluesky4.txt
2. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/atack/holmes/bluesky5.txt
3. http://members.chello.nl/mgormez/childabuse/arg100694.html
4. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/atack/holmes/bluesky3.txt
5. Amazon reverses decision on book ban, Charles Cooper, ZDNet news, May 20, 1999
6. Sprenger, Polly (1999-05-25). "Scientology Book an Open Issue". Wired News. Retrieved 2006-10-06. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
7. A Piece of Blue Sky, Joh Atack, 1990

This article related to a book about religion is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Religious studies book stubs
• 1990 books
• Scientology books