Greenville County

"The most complete picture of Scientology so far." —Garry Wills, New York Times Book Review
Based on five years of research, access to confidential documents, and extensive interviews with current and former Scientologists, Janet Reitman sheds some long-awaited light on the ever-elusive religion of the Church of Scientology.
Scientology, created in 1954 by pulp science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, claims to be the world's...

In 'The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature', Dr. William James takes aim at the nature of religion from a scientific/academic point of view-something that had, until this landmark work, been sorely missed. James believed that the study of the origin of an object or concept should not play a role in the study of its value. As an example, he alluded to the Quaker religion and its founder, George Fox. Many scientists immediately...

A preeminent scientist—and the world's most prominent atheist—asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.
With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments...

"Looks at the trends and ramifications of a country increasingly leaving organized religion behind, focusing on how this growing number of nonreligious Americans find meaning, purpose, and community"--

Britain's pagan past, with its astonishing number and variety of mysterious monuments, atmospheric sites, enigmatic artefacts, bloodthirsty legends and cryptic inscriptions, has always enthralled and perplexed us. 'Pagan Britain' is a history of religious beliefs from the Old Stone Age to the coming of Christianity. This ambitious book integrates the latest evidence to survey our transformed - and transforming - understanding of early religious behaviour;...

From one of the leading historians of our time comes a brilliant and incisive work of history that examines the politics of religion and the religion of politics, from the catastrophe of the First World War to the modern-day War on Terror. Beginning with the chaotic post-World War I landscape, in which religious belief was one way of reordering a world knocked off its axis, Sacred Causes is a penetrating critique of how religion has often been camouflaged...

Is it possible that the entities we have known as "gods," the gods of the ancient world, have come back and are affecting your life right now? Could their existence explain everything that is now transforming our culture, our families, our children, our businesses, our government, our technology -- everything? What is the dark trinity? And when did it come to American and the world? Exactly which gods have returned? And how have each of them changed...