Hubbard also had a wild experience in World War II, if not the distinguished one he wanted people to believe. Meanwhile, he was increasingly turning his talents for exaggeration into a budding career as a writer for the pulps. If he was too busy to attend his college classes, for example, it was because he was barnstorming the country with a friend in a biplane. Hubbard told tall tales about his accomplishments, but he actually did live a pretty crazy existence, getting into and out of trouble with bombast. Hubbard’s college records showed that he’d failed the only class he took in nuclear physics and that he’d dropped out of George Washington University after his sophomore year and never took a degree.īut Miller wasn’t only debunking the legend - he was documenting a remarkable life.

Miller demonstrated that neither was true.

Scientology’s early books made much of the fact that Hubbard had become one of the nation’s earliest nuclear physicists and was a medical doctor. But ultimately, he was unimpressed with the country, writing in his journal, “The trouble with China is, there are too many chinks here.” In Beijing in 1928, Hubbard noted that the Chinese could make millions if they turned the Great Wall into a roller coaster. Miller found instead that Hubbard had made two trips to Asia while his father was stationed in Guam and made observations that were pretty typical for a teenager. “Bare-Faced Messiah” is a gripping read that tears the fabric of the Hubbard myth into tatters. Miller has rewritten some of the introductory material, but otherwise the book is unchanged - and it still holds up. Twenty-seven years after its original release, “Bare-Faced Messiah” is getting new life in the US with a new publisher, Silvertail Books, The New York Post reports. The biography was heavily cited by later Scientology books, including Lawrence Wright’s best-selling “Going Clear.” But few have had a chance to read it.

Ron Hubbard,” finished the year after Hubbard’s 1986 death, was successfully printed everywhere but in the US, where, after two years of litigation, Miller’s American publisher threw in the towel. “Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Miller’s account of Hubbard’s life was so devastating that Scientology tried to have his book banned. Ron Hubbard is a larger-than-life figure - a war hero, philosopher and humanitarian.īut the real man was a dissembling, emotional wreck who made up most of his legendary exploits out of whole cloth, writes British journalist Russell Miller.

The bare faced messiah