Synopses & Reviews
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 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.
Review
"A vivid, fascinating revisitation of a time and series of episodes fast receding into history even as their forgotten survivors still walk among us." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"Magisterial.... Guinn's exhaustive research, shrewd analysis, and engaging prose illuminate a monstrous yet tragic figure — and the motives of those who lost their souls to him." Publishers Weekly
Review
"I have to say that it is weird to find out the background of things that I grew up hearing about around the dinner table. The level of research and detail in The Road to Jonestown is the best ever, and really lets readers understand not only what happened, but how and why. This book tells the Jim Jones story better than anything I have read to date." Jim Jones, Jr.
About the Author
Jeff Guinn is the winner of the 2016 TCU Texas Book Award and the bestselling author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including Buffalo Trail, Glorious, Manson, The Last Gunfight, and Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. The former books editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and award-winning investigative journalist, he is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. Guinn lives in Fort Worth.
Jeff Guinn on PowellsBooks.Blog
It’s always been hard to get to Jonestown. In the mid-1970s, when Jim Jones and Peoples Temple established their foreign settlement, one of the most isolated areas on earth was a deliberate choice...
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