Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught.

Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible.

This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Įveryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). As courageous as it is honest, the author’s tell-all book offers disturbing insights into the inner workings of a church that is as controversial as ever.Ī gripping narrative perfect for those seeking more information after reading Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear. An unrepentant LeClair left Scientology in 2011, but her nightmarish battle, which included protracted legal wrangling over accusations of fraud, would not be over for years. Then she fell in love with another woman and became the target of a Scientology “Black Propaganda campaign” designed to ruin her and her business. A generous donor, it was only after LeClair had spent large sums on useless “auditing”-the church equivalent of therapy-and threatened to withhold future funds that she was able to divorce. Though she was a poster child for Scientology, her relationship to the church soured when she tried to divorce her husband. The author struggled in private with both her sexuality and an abusive marriage, but she thrived professionally, “making money hand over fist” in the insurance industry while serving as volunteer president of the church’s Youth for Human Rights organization. So she married a man she helped convert to Scientology three years later. To move out of what Scientologists called “Lower Conditions” that would impede her spiritual progress, LeClair was tasked with finding a boyfriend. She then underwent “Security Checks” to determine her fitness for Scientology membership, during which she obliquely admitted to having experienced same-sex attraction. Pressured from the start to join Scientology, the author finally began sessions with a Scientologist minister after a traumatic car crash. Oklahoma native LeClair first came into contact with Scientology after her mother took a consulting job with a management firm that encouraged her to take Scientology “self-improvement courses.” Soon she was encouraging her 17-year-old daughter to forgo her plans for college and work full-time at her company. A high-profile former Scientology member tells the story of how she came to terms with her homosexuality and found the courage to leave the organization.

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