Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2013. It is the most comprehensive and best-sourced journalistic investigation of the Church of Scientology ever published — a book that survived the church’s famously aggressive legal apparatus (Wright’s publisher hired seven fact-checkers and the book was vetted by multiple lawyers) and that became the basis for Alex Gibney’s 2015 HBO documentary.
Wright structures the book around parallel narratives: the life of L. Ron Hubbard (science fiction writer, Navy veteran, bigamist, fantasist, and inventor of Dianetics — tracing the gap between his official biography and documented reality), the evolution of Scientology from self-help movement to church to corporation to something unprecedented in American religious history, and the stories of individual believers — particularly Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning screenwriter whose departure from the church provides the book’s emotional spine.
The investigation documents physical abuse by church leader David Miscavige, the quasi-imprisonment of Sea Org members, the systematic disconnection policy that tears families apart, the vast real estate empire and offshore accounts, and the cultivation of celebrity members (particularly Tom Cruise and John Travolta) as both propaganda tools and revenue sources.
Wright’s method is scrupulous: every claim is sourced, every denial is noted, and the church’s responses are given space. This meticulousness is itself a statement — that the documented facts are sufficient to the argument.
Collecting Going Clear
First edition (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2013): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$35
- Signed first edition: $35–$80