2018 Edgar Award Finalist–Best Fact Crime By the New York Times bestselling author of Manson, the comprehensive, authoritative, and tragic story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre–the largest murder-suicide in American history. In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism. His congregation was … gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California. He became involved in electoral politics, and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader.
In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died–including almost three hundred infants and children–after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.
Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is the definitive book about Jim Jones and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.more
This takes you inside the life of Jim Jones and his slow descent into madness. It truly was madness, in my opinion. I have always been fascinated by this tragedy but this was the first time I have read something this in-depth about it. This book definitely packs it all which can make it hard to take in but it is definitely well worth the read.
Filled in the background of Jim Jones, And showed the development of his ability to manipulate people.
Well-researched, coherent, and comprehensive. Well-written with a very straightforward style.
This book tells the frightening story of Jim Jones making this monster human and interesting. Guinn makes Jones human and slowly paints a picture of how he turned into a mass murderer.
While dense, especially in its latter chapters, this book sets itself up to become a definitive source of information not only for those researching Peoples Temple, but cults altogether. This book is perfect for anyone who had ever wondered how a cult gets stated, as well as how so many intelligent people join. Chilling and informative.
This is the true story of Jim Jones who lead a church/cult. He and over 900 of his members in Jonestown (in Guyana South America) killed themselves in November, 1978 because they thought (According to Jones) that the US govenment was after them. Among the dead were over 300 children.
Jim Jones started his People’s Temple with the idea that he was going to bring equality among minorities and whites in America. He lived a socialist, communist style life with his followers – everyone sharing equally and giving back to the poor. But over time, Jone’s paranoia, drug use, and delusions of grandure lead to the downfall of the church and the loss of almost 1000 lives.
This book follows Jones from even before his birth (there is extensive information about his mother and father), his childhood upbringing with a drunk disabeled father and a distant mother, and his beginnings as a minister. Even from a young age, Jones became interested in religion but not from the standpoint of God being the center, but community. His churches stretched from Indiana to California and then finally to Guyana. The book goes into detail about his entire life from marriage to children to what he was trying to accomplish with his church, and it is eye opening.
This was a very interesting book. I am sure at some point I was aware of Jim Jones and this story (I was only 3 years old when the suicides occured), but I don’t recall it. The author has done a good job in retelling the story from the FBI files and interviews he conducted related to Jim Jones, his followers, and the Temple. The author is good at keeping a steady, unbiased telling throughout the book.
It is a long book, but I encourage you to read it. I am always a fan of a well written non-fiction. So check this one out.
Factual and easy to read.
Disappointing. This book took me forever to read. I found the author did not follow a clear timeline of events and was constantly jumping backwards and forwards in time. I also found the detail unnecessary and tedious. It seemed as though every bit of minutiae was being recorded. However, when the end came, the story was rushed along with very little factual information.
Jim Jones was a complex man. I was unaware of how sincere his efforts to end segregation and to end economic inequality were in the early days of his mission. As often happens, these high ideals were soon morphed into delusional fantasies and deceits propitiated by the drug-cluded mind of the leader, Jones. His “church” was actually more of a socialistic statement about building a society rather than a religion. How and why do these things so often change?
I was unaware that he actually tried a dry run of the suicide event with his community in order to discover who was really loyal to him. When the time came, and the congressman and his entourage ramped up the paranoia, the real Flavor-aid (not Kool-Aid) was willingly consumed by more than a third of the residents, and forced on the balance after over 200 children were made to drink, or injected, with the poison. In all, nearly 1200 people died in Jonestown.
The event staggers my imagination yet today. Can people really be duped into these kinds of acts by those pretending to be religious leaders? And then I think of the thousands of Crusaders sent by there religious leader to kill the infidels and put their own lives in jeopardy while doing so. Man can be doomed by the lure of false religious concepts!
This book was a startling look at the rise and fall of Peoples Temple. It was haunting to see how Jim Jones brainwashed his followers. The mass suicide/murders occurred while I was an infant, so this book was extremely informative.