The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple - Paperback

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The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple
  • The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple
The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple - Paperback

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple - Paperback

by Jeff Guinn
$21.99
$21.99

Book Overview

An Edgar Award Finalist for Best Fact Crime

"A thoroughly readable, thoroughly chilling account of a brilliant con man and his all-too vulnerable prey" (The Boston Globe)--the definitive story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre, the largest murder-suicide in American history, by the New York Times bestselling author of Manson.

In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially mixed, and he was a leader in the early civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California, where he got involved in electoral politics and became a prominent Bay Area leader. But underneath the surface lurked a terrible darkness.

In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones's life, from his early days as an idealistic minister to a secret life of extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing, before the fateful 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 most complete picture to date of this tragic saga, and of the man who engineered it...The result is a disturbing portrait of evil--and a compassionate memorial to those taken in by Jones's malign charisma" (San Francisco Chronicle).
ISBN9781476763835
Author Jeff Guinn
PublisherSimon & Schuster
GenreBiography, Religion & spirituality, and History
FormatPaperback
PublishedApril 2018
LanguageENG- English
Pages544
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Biography & Autobiography History Nonfiction

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More by Jeff Guinn

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple - Paperback

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple - Paperback

By Jeff Guinn

About Jeff Guinn

Jeff Guinn is the winner of the 2016 TCU Texas Book Award and the bestselling author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including Silver City, 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.

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